100 large pots of trees and shrubs advancing into the city to regenerate barren soil: this is it ‘The Walking Woods’the project of Pesaro 2024 which takes shape in the section of the dossier dedicated to the ‘living nature of culture’. The journey begins Saturday 20 April starting at 10am – a real e own day of community celebration in which everyone is called to participate – with 8 stages that will run until the month of October, each time an opportunity to create entertainment and cultural dissemination events around the itinerant greenery.
Moved by an experience heard and not even seen, in December 2022 the mayor Matteo Ricci and Daniele Vimini deputy mayor and councilor for Beauty of the Municipality of Pesaro, imagined producing on the occasion of Pesaro 2024 a temporary installation of trees and shrubs in places of the city where the vegetal element was absent, like a green invasion. The event had to be capable of producing a reinterpretation of the occupied urban space itself and at the same time a rethinking of the man/nature relationship and so it was thought. From April 20, 100 trees and shrubs (6 m and a half of the tallest plant) placed in 1 cubic meter hemp pots will occupy part of Piazza del Popolo and after two weeks they will proceed on a long journey in stages towards their final destination. In October they will be planted in the ground in the area of the Santa Marta Hotel Institute which thanks to the ‘Walking Forest’ project will be significantly redeveloped by transforming heavily degraded and asphyxiated soil into a park also equipped with green classrooms.
The opening day
This is the program Saturday 20th: from 10am the convocation of volunteers who want to collaborate in the movement of the plants expected in the exit area of the Barracks in Viale della Liberazione, expected to move 25 plants for each transfer; there will be music during the lunch break by the kids from Santa Marta, la performance by Simone Morottti and the Pouët puppet company, the Candelara Band at 3pm and final DJ set by a Santa Marta student. But the very latest program will be defined during the day also based on the actual times required by the transport logistics of an event never staged before.
The subjects involved
The project was coordinated by Michele Gambini – municipal councilor – and operationally entrusted to Aspes, implementing subject. The latter made use of the professional work of Olga Moskvina, landscape designer who took care of the entire planning and logistics part, from the planning of the final destination space of the plants to the sourcing of the same in over 10 nurseries scattered throughout Italy up to the creation of the hemp vase, a solution specifically designed to minimize the environmental impact of the ‘event. The care of the artistic and informative events that will accompany the different stages of the Bosco is by Sergio Paladino (obviously in team with coordinator and designer). Of course the design of the space of the Santa Marta saw the entire school as protagonist with the manager Roberto Franca, the teachers and the kids. Another fundamental piece of the long Bosco event is the collaboration of Civil protection during the moving phases and in the care of the plants.
A huge thank you goes to 28th ‘Pavia’ Regiment in the person of his commander, Colonel Antonio di Leonardo, for having hosted the Bosco under construction. Considering the logistical complexity of the entire work, the Bosco probably would not have been possible without the hospitality of the Army.
Other companies have also generously stepped up to help the ‘Walking Forest’: Renco has made 10 plants available which will go to the Molaroni Park in October, Lindbergh Hotels&Resorts of Nardo Filippetti has ‘lent’ some plants and the company Moretti Ugo Forklifts provides lifts for loading and unloading plants on trolleys built by the company Teo Rimorchi.
The transfers of the ‘Walking Forest’, events within the event, will involve volunteers and citizens. They have already responded to the appeal VolunteerX of Pesaro 2024 (about a hundred involved) ei Municipality greenery volunteers but the invitation to participate in the project is open and extended to anyone who wants to contribute to moving the plants. In its passages the Bosco will also involve Liceo Artistico Mengaroni when it will occupy – welcomed by the children – the space in front of the school: the square of Creativity.
History
The project started in October 2023 with a series of participatory meetings from which it clearly emerged that a work like the ‘Walking Forest’ could only have a profound meaning if it brought about a regenerative and definitive transformation. It was necessary for the forest to regain a compromised space. Precisely in those meetings the idea of involving Santa Marta emerged, an idea then immediately accepted by the mayor Matteo Ricci, the president of the Province Giuseppe Paolini and the school director Roberto Franca. The school was the protagonist of numerous meetings in which the children expressed their needs and expectations and were the starting point for the planning of the redevelopment intervention which will start with the preliminary preparation of the land well in advance of the location definitive of the plants. Another indication that emerged from the participatory meetings at the beginning of the project was the concern that an event of this nature should be designed with the lowest possible environmental impact. Precisely for this reason, all the material used for the Walking Forest, including the vases, will be reused in the regeneration and redevelopment of the Santa Marta area, so as not to waste anything.
The idea is to bring trees into spaces that normally do not see the vegetal element to reinvent them, to produce a visual shock. It was developed through a participatory process that will ultimately lead to a real and definitive transformation of the city: the 100 plants that leave on Saturday will be placed in the area pertaining to the Santa Marta Institute in October, transforming a de facto sterile place into a forest with also green classrooms. The meaning of the operation is to invest even huge resources to recover a space that does not correspond to the level of quality that we should guarantee for a school and produce environmental transformation and sustainability. In the 5 months before arriving at Santa Marta, the forest will speak to the city with its presence because the 100 plants will be moved periodically to occupy spaces that usually have no greenery. This is a very complex operation from a logistical point of view which does not have many precedents in Italy and in the rest of the world. There are many aspects to take care of, for example it is necessary to guarantee the safety of the plants – therefore the vase protects against sudden changes in temperature and humidity that are too sudden -, but everything has been thought of in any case for the protection of the plants and to minimize waste at the end of the project that must leave environmental sustainability. For this reason the vases are made of totally natural hemp panels (pressed fibres), vases which did not exist and were produced specifically, and raw earth, a material which will then also be used for the arrangement of the Santa Marta and can be buried because it is compostable.
The path of the walking forest
DEPARTURE ARRIVAL DATE
1 20/4 viale della liberazione piazza del Popolo
2 04/5 Piazza del Popolo v. St. Francis
3 18/5 v. S. Francesco Mengaroni / square of creativity
4 01/6 Mengaroni viale Marconi (Scavolini auditorium)
5 29/6 viale Marconi Calata Caio Dullio
6 13/7 Calata Caio Dullio viale Marconi
7 03/8 viale Marconi Sfera Grande di Pomodoro
8 07/9 Large Tomato Sphere Santa Marta area
I said: a forest that moves.
(Shakespeare, Macbeth Act V, Scene V)
100 large pots of trees and shrubs proceed through the city: The Walking Woods.
The Forest advances to regenerate sterile, asphyxiated and mortified soil.
Space of rediscovered fecundity.
The Forest moves and has will, intention.
In his passing he chooses to occupy places of stone and asphalt to suggest a vision that breaks the habit: which is, but it could be otherwise.
The Bosco communicates: from April to October it tells us a different story.
www.pesaro2024.it
