Elita Acosta, editorial director of 'Verde es Vida': “There is nothing banal in the garden, although there are many banal gardens”

The paths to reach a garden are very varied. You can go directly to one, or not know of its existence, but the twists and turns are already responsible for taking you to enjoy the aroma of its plants. For Elita Acosta, the gardening path opened little by little, since she was a child, and her destiny had prepared for her a green future full of the beauty of flowers. This graduate in Philosophy, of Argentine origin, she let herself be surrounded by stems and leaves, and before she realized it she was immersed in gardens.

Since 2010 she has been the editorial director of the magazine Green is life, published by the Spanish Association of Garden Centers. With an average circulation of 100,000 copies per issue, it has managed to stand out as a reference publication for lovers of gardening and landscaping. Free distribution in nurseries and florists, You can also enjoy its content on-line.

Ask. Who is the magazine for? Green is life?

Answer. To a very diverse audience: landscapers, professional and amateur gardeners with very different profiles and degrees of knowledge and experience, including those who are taking their first steps in the world of plants and know very little. In 60 pages I have to make sure everyone finds something interesting to read and discover how fascinating, exciting and inexhaustible the world of gardens, plants and nature is. That is the success of the magazine.

Q. In any case, its origins did not begin with gardening…

R. No and yes. I studied Philosophy at university, did the UAM-El País master's degree in Journalism and worked for many years in a corporate publishing agency in Madrid, where I was executive creative director. But nature and gardens have been present in my life for as long as I can remember. My mother, my grandmothers, my godmother had gardens and patios with plants in huge pots. And, in addition, he spent his summers on the family farm in the hills of Tucumán, in Argentina, in full contact with nature. There were fig trees, grapevines, walnut trees, chestnut trees, many pompom dahlias, agapanthus, huge cacti, mulberry trees and cypress trees… and a mountain to explore on my own. Due to its exuberant vegetation, Tucumán is the “Garden of the Republic”.

Q. …And he has known how to combine those Philosophy studies with his current profession.

R. When I took over Green is life I experienced it as a gift: the final touch of my career. In its contents I recover that interest in nature that I discovered when I was little, and at the same time I close the circle with my Philosophy studies. Gardens are an expression of their time, a vision of the world, they express our way of relating to nature at every moment in history. There is nothing banal in the garden, although there are many banal gardens.

Q. Have you noticed a change in the mentality of landscapers in the years you have been involved in this field?

R. Yes, many have evolved towards landscaping that is more sensitive to the surrounding landscape, more naturalistic, more in line with climatic reality. It is a more sustainable gardening, with low irrigation and less demand for maintenance, based on Mediterranean plants or other Mediterranean climates in the world, which are better adapted to our soils and the rigors of our climate. They try to break the cliché of the patch of grass surrounded by flower beds.

Q. What current of landscaping prevails in Spain and Europe?

R. Naturalism, in my opinion the most efficient response to the challenges of climate change, the loss of biodiversity and destruction of nature that we are witnessing. It pursues a fusion of nature and human action through a plantation design that evokes the sensation of the wild. We long to return to nature and to the scale of each one—those who have just bought their first plant, garden enthusiasts who know a little or a lot, and landscapers—we seek to be that gardener of the planetary garden, the biosphere, the what Gilles Clément speaks [un jardinero, arquitecto paisajista, botánico, entomólogo y escritor francés].

Q. What actions in the landscape, urban or more rugged, have caused you the greatest curiosity or admiration?

R. Good gardens excite. I was especially struck by two that are the fruit of several generations of the same family: Stourhead, a lush landscape garden in Wiltshire, a garden moral typical of the 18th century in England, which evokes the path to virtue of the hero Aeneas; and the Ninfa garden, an hour from Rome, romantic, built among the ruins of a medieval town, the private paradise where the Caetani family sought refuge in Mussolini's Italy, a capsule of culture and sophistication where they felt protected. Nymph inspired The Finzi-Contini Garden, the novel by Giorgio Bassani. I wrote about these two gardens in Green is life. In Morocco I was fascinated by Azaren, by Ossart and Maurières, in the Ourika Valley. And in Spain, Lur Gardenin Oiartzun, by Íñigo Segurola, and Yonte Dehesain Ávila, by Miguel Urquijo and Renate Kastner.

Q. What can't be missing from your ideal garden?

R. Roses. I love them! The old ones, but especially the New English Roseswhich are cup-shaped, smell wonderfully and also reflower in autumn.

Q. And what emblematic species of Argentine flora always appear in your memory?

R. The lapachos with pink flowers (Handroanthus impetiginosus) and yellow (Handroanthus chrysotrichus) that are seen in the streets of Tucumán. Imagine an alignment of pink glasses along an avenue. It is spectacular. And the jacarandas (Jacaranda mimosifolia)! They are native trees that the French architect and naturalist Carlos Thays, the great figure of public landscaping in Argentina, introduced into gardening towards the end of the 19th century.

Q. What do you think public gardening should be like?

R. I understand the conditions of public gardening, but in general hard materials continue to prevail and, above all, a plant selection that does not usually have much interest. But there are usually exceptions, such as the small square of Arriquíbar, in Bilbao, the work of the landscape designer María Iza: garden poetry in the heart of the city.

Q. Which personality, now missing from the gardening world, would you have liked to interview for your magazine?

R. To many: André Le Nôtre, Capability Brown, Vita Sackville-West, Mien Ruys, Christopher Lloyd… But in Green is life I have had the privilege of interviewing many of the great landscape painters of the moment, among them Piet Oudolf, the most outstanding international figure of naturalism, and Gilles Clément, whose ideas are essential to understanding what garden we can or should make in these times of unstoppable destruction. of nature and climate change. His idea of ​​the planetary garden, where the gardener is humanity as a whole, and his idea of ​​an ecology humanist, where the human being is understood as an inseparable and necessary part of nature, seem very illuminating to me. If we want to overcome climate change, stop the destruction of habitats and ensure a future for our grandchildren, this is the way.

_