In Salento, Eden CampoMadre is born, a large biodiversity park in Calimera, a small town near Lecce. The intention of the entrepreneurs, Rita Guia Baldo and Giorgio Sergio, who invested in the project, is for it to become the largest biodiversity park in Southern Italy.
It will probably be a field open to the public for educational tours, guided visits and events and shows. The park is very large and has about 50 hectares. The official opening will be in April 2025, we had the pleasure of interviewing Rita and Giorgio.
CampoMadre: Interview with Rita and Giorgio
Things CampoMadre? “The beginning of a love story with life, with rediscovered nature, with the planet, with well-being.”
Why did you decide to name it Eden CampoMadre? “Because we believe that Eden is not a myth. From the observation of ecosystems in nature, any field, if left to itself, with a minimum of environmental conditions, soon becomes covered with what we call weeds, then the brambles will come – with the function of protecting the young trees – and when the young trees have gained momentum, grasses and brambles will give way to the undergrowth. In about ten years we will have created a small paradise that will take care of its entire ecosystem, spontaneously supporting its flora and fauna.”
What do you find when you come to Campo di Madre? “You have the opportunity to experience the natural abundance 500.000 square meters of ancient woods, orchards of ancient fruit, fields of lavender and manuka, holistic apiaries, thousand-year-old olive groves and xylella-resistant Leccino, ponds of water lilies and ponds of lotus flowers with dragonflies, amphitheatres on the lake, flowering trail, benches, cultivation on straw, rewilding fields, new tropical orchards, charcoal piles, the largest synergic vegetable garden in Italy…”
How did the idea come about? “We asked ourselves: what happens if we recreate that system at home, say with a hectare of land? If we give it the right design and plant a third of orchard, a third of woodland and a third free for our more or less perennial vegetables, a natural biolake and our activities? We will have created a small Eden that will support us and our family more or less forever, becoming stronger and more virtuous as time goes by. That Eden in its small way will clean the water with its plants, will mitigate temperatures and generate clean air with its greenery, creating better people who will have their own little kingdom, of peace, harmony and support. Instead of going to the supermarket to buy fruit after working all day to make money to buy it, that person in his private Eden will go out and take the fig, the apple, the pear directly from his tree. He will take the lettuce, the artichokes, the asparagus directly from his synergistic garden. Just plant a tree seed and you will have the best of free fruit for life.”
There is an old proverb that if everyone swept in front of their house, the whole world would be clean. If everyone created their own enchanted garden, wouldn't the whole world be an enchanted garden? “At Eden CampoMadre we have turned that enchanted garden into a park where you can immerse yourself for an entire day and return to experience the wonder of living in harmony with the planet, rather than separated at home, confined inside concrete cubicles, in an apartment among apartments in what we call our cities.”
Why did you choose Salento? Why the small town of Calimera? “The park, with its naturalistic-archaeological area, is located in Borgo San Biagio, a medieval village where, around the year 1000, the Byzantine monks – in the second wave of Greek colonization after that of the classical period – gave rise to what would later become the town of Calimera. It is a place rich in ancient history with the underground crypt of those monks, the small church and some of the same olive trees planted by those monks. But it also has a much older and more fascinating thousand-year-old history with the dolmens, the quarries, the ancient sheep tracks. The park is located right in the center of what were the ancient holm oak forests that once covered the entire Salento. A fertile place of mythology around, with the megalith of the Sacred Rock of San Vito, the stone of the great mother and the fertility rite. The stratifications of history are palpable in every corner of this which was the heart and center of what would later become the Grecìa Salentina. A multi-millennial story that from dolmens and crypts, passes through the summer house of Vito Domenico Palumbo, the poet who at the beginning of the century wrote Kali Nifta, the symbolic song of the Salento musical heritage, right there in his summer house.
In a territory like Salento, tormented by viruses like Cylella, climate change, rising temperatures, fires... does it make sense to talk about natural abundance? “It not only makes sense, but it is vital! If you look at it, the planet has impeccable systems and infinite resilience. We will not destroy the planet, thinking that is a big drunkenness of personal importance. The planet only needs an earthquake, an eruption, a tsunami, an ice age or any other event to shake us off forever and resume its immense virtuous cycles. What we can destroy is our possibility of existence on this planet. And precisely in this Salento of ours that is becoming an outpost, a frontier zone threatened by desertification, an oasis of natural abundance that explores its possibilities and solutions, it is not only vital, but it is an oasis of hope for all of us. We can live with or against nature: here in Salento with viruses, rising temperatures, fires, we are starting to see the results of our dysfunctional practices. But the functionality of nature is always there at our disposal ready to welcome us with open arms. All we have to do for the planet, for nature to recover, is actually to get out of the way and let those who in millions of years of evolution have always shown that they know how to do it masterfully do it. Or we can collaborate and co-create with that splendid nature and then the love story that is waiting for us can change the destiny of our beloved and mistreated humanity”.
Leave a comment (0)