Bergamo Green Square, Italy
2021
Garden design and planting design: Nigel Dunnett
Each year, the city of Bergamo in Italy invites a different designer to design the Green Square. They produce a temporary garden installation in the beautiful Piazza Vecchia in the old walled town. I was invited to create the garden in 2021. The garden is in place for the whole of September each year, and is created in association with the International Festival of Landscapes and Gardens that is held in Bergamo at the same time.
The concept for 2021 was ‘From Nature to Nature: a Step into the City of the Future’. Bergamo was hit very hard during the pandemic, and the 2021 Green Square and Landscape Festival was the first to be held for two years. The Green Square in 2021 was designed to give a hint of how our cities could feel and function if we filled our spaces with glorious and functional planting.
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The design created a linked series of 'social ovals' within which people could congregate, surrounded by colour-themed planting
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The design was based on the concept of first filling the entire square with the most beautiful and dramatic naturalistic planting, to maximise both the aesthetic, functional and biodiversity value. And then the social oval spaces were cut into of this planting - each oval was offset from the others and placed at a slightly different angle, with linking paths between the ovals, and paths linking the ovals to the edges of the square.
To create a greater sense of immersion, small hills were constructed around the edges of the ovals to increase the height of the planting, and to mimic the hills surrounding the city of Bergamo.
The images below show the design development, with an initial concept sketch that indicated the main directional 'flow' of people through the square, with the social ovals aligned along this curving line. The second diagram indicates a refinement of this, with a series of landform mounds or hills set along another line of movement. The third diagram shows the final concept, with paths linking between the ovals and with the edges of the square. The final plan shows a further development, with some space taken around the edges for outdoor seating spaces for surroundings bars, cafes and restaurants
Below: a concept visual produced to indicate the idea of filling the square with beautiful planting within which people could become immersed, with mounds and hills to indicate the landform - here shown with groups of grasses. Image: Jack Dunnett
Below: the Green Square in construction
