THE GARDEN PROJECT: AUTUMN 2025. Authors, artists and garden designers

From September to December 2025, this programme of autumn events forms part of ‘The Garden Project’, organised by Il Palmerino Cultural Association and Calliope Arts Foundation, in conjunction with the British Institute of Florence, 2024-2027.

From 13 September to 16 December 2025

INNER GARDENS: Flavia Arlotta

Il Palmerino Cultural Association, Via Il Palmerino 6

Ph. Still Life with a Samovar, Flavia Arlotta, 1981, the Colacicchi Archive

This exhibition features the landscapes and still-life works of twentieth-century adoptive Florentine artist Flavia Arlotta. “My mother’s painting is linked to the home sphere, like many still-life artists, and the objects she collected are a symbol of her way of being,” says Flavia Arlotta’s son Francesco Colacicchi, also a painter, in an interview by Linda Falcone, published in the Spring Issue 2025 of Restoration Conversations magazine, produced by the Calliope Arts Foundation. “Often, my mother would choose a corner of the house, set a scene and paint it, but her objects seemed to fit, and looked like they had always been there; they never looked like arrangements.”

As we await the opening, we’d also like to recall the words of author Laura Corti about the artist: “Her still-life works reveal her love for beautiful, well-made things, and the pleasure she got from wares created through the passion and talent of skilled hands, which included the objects she collected at home. How can we fail to recall the wonderful collection of ceramic vessels she acquired over the course of her life, in places she and Giovanni [Colacicchi] would go to paint – especially in the South. They went looking for hints of light and landscapes, but also sought out forms from the crafters’ tradition, its magnificent shapes and lively colours.”

September 2025

'THE GARDEN PROJECT 2025' GRANT AWARDEES BEGIN THEIR RESIDENCY

Il Palmerino Cultural Association, Via Il Palmerino 6

Italian artist Silvia Infranco and French artist Cyrielle Gulascsy begin to prepare their artwork for display at Il Palmerino and Museo Sant'Orsola. They are looking ahead to a collective exhibition in Spring 2027, thanks to The Garden Project art-production grant.

For Infranco and Gulacsy, art is a quest. In a follow-up interview with artists Silvia Infranco and Cyrielle Gulacsy, Linda Falcone homes in on the direction artist recipients of the 2025 ‘The Garden Project’ grant have been taking with their work, since their initial art production residency began. “Infranco takes us on a multi-century historical journey, in which plants, and prescriptions derived from them, are a source of power for women, as well as a symbol of their vocation for caring for others, at home or in community settings,” Falcone writes in her article ‘Garden Inspirations, from roots to sky, published in Restoration Conversations magazine, produced by the Calliope Arts Foundation. “The art voyage Gulacsy proposes is off-planet, but it begins with a ‘bit of earth’ and the industrious insects that help it bloom. ‘I put on my beekeepers suit and feel like an astronaut!,’ says Gulacsy, ‘What I am observing now in the garden, still looks like the sky; the parallel is very interesting. I want my art to be about exploration.’” For more on these artists.

Tuesday, October 7, 2025, 6pm

IN CONVERSATION WITH VANESSA NICOLSON

Independent curator and archivist Carla Danella speaks to author and art historian Vanessa Nicolson about her works and life

Il Palmerino Cultural Association, Via Il Palmerino 6

Reservations required: associazione@palmerino.it

Author Vanessa Nicolson, courtesy of the author

Vanessa Nicolson is an author and journalist, and a former art historian. Her most recent book, Angels of Mud, is a multi-generational novel set in London’s Italian/Irish neighbourhood of Clerkenwell in the aftermath of World War Two and in Florence at the time of the 1966 Flood. Vanessa’s grandparents were renowned writer Vita Sackville-West and diplomat Sir Harold Nicolson, who are today best known for having created one of the world’s most famous gardens at Sissinghurst Castle in England. Vanessa has lived in Sissinghurst for over 30 years, in a house – once part of her grandparents’ estate – inherited from her father.

Event invitation, November 21, 2025

Friday, November 21, 2025, 9:30 to 2pm

SEMINAR. THE EXTRAORDINARY LIVES OF WOMEN GARDEN DESIGNERS AND CREATORS

University of Florence, University Museum System

Villa La Quiete, Via del Badrone 2

For more info: edu@sma.unifi.it

Admission is free. Spaces are limited.

Join us (in Italian) on Friday, November 21 at Villa La Quiete for a half-day seminar and garden tour: ‘The Happiness of Gardens: The extraordinary lives of women garden designers’ scheduled from 9.30am to 1.30pm. This lecture series, organised by the University of Florence, as part of the ‘Eredità delle Donne’ festival, focuses on several noteworthy women who lived and worked in the 19th and 20th centuries, creating gardens – either in reality or in literary fiction – that continue to enrich our heritage and cultural imagination today. There will be a tour of the Villa La Quiete garden, following the lectures. The garden was restored and opened to the public in the spring of 2025 thanks to PNRR funding in support of historic parks and gardens.

The Day's Programme

9:30 to 10:00, Donatella Pegazzano, University of Florence (A princess in the garden: Marguerite Chapin Caetani and the Paradise of the Nymph); 10:00-10:30, Maria Chiara Pozzana, Firenze Greenway Association (The garden and freedom. The writing of Elizabeth von Arnim and Vernon Lee); 10:30-11:00, Katia Lysy, Villa La Foce (A century of history: Iris Origo’s garden at La Foce); 11:30-12, Anna Lambertini, University of Florence (Maggie Keswick Jencks. The garden’s therapeutic power); 12-12:30, Emanuela Morelli, University of Florence (The gardens of Jane Austen); 12:30-1pm, Emanuela Paglia, University of Florence (Vita Sackville West and her garden); 1-1:30pm, Linda Falcone and Federica Parretti, Calliope Arts and Il Palmerino (Painter Lola Costa and her garden at Villa Il Palmerino); 13:30, tour of the restored garden of Villa La Quiete, curated by Inge Iacoviello, University of Florence, University Museum System

November 26, 2025, 5:30pm

THE LIFE AND ART OF FRANCESCA ALEXANDER (1837 - 1917)

with Jacqueline Marie Musacchio

Il Palmerino Cultural Association, Via Il Palmerino 6

Reservations required: associazione@palmerino.it

Francesca Alexander, 1865, Decorating a Shrine, courtesy of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

Francesca Alexander was a largely self-taught artist, and both her art and writing focused on Italians, Italian life, and the Italian landscape. Her portraits and nature studies, and her translations of songs and stories, were much admired by her contemporaries, including John Ruskin, who published three of her manuscripts and promoted her work to his followers. Alexander used her earnings from the sale of these publications, and her art, to fund her many charitable endeavors; both friends and admirers marveled at her saintly character, which they linked to a romantic view of Italy itself. This talk, following Musacchio's recent book on Alexander, will examine her work, as well as letters, diaries, guidebooks, newspapers, and magazines, to provide a vivid biography of Francesca and her place in history.

Jacqueline Marie Musacchio is Professor of Art at Wellesley College in the United States. A specialist in Italian Renaissance and Baroque art, and Americans in nineteenth-century Italy, her previous publications include the books The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy (1999) and Art, Marriage, and Family in the Florentine Renaissance Palace (2008) as well as articles and essays on the Anglo-American population of Italy.