La Biblioteca della Natura (the Nature Library) is an ambitious project by Cristina Mostosi that reflects her love for botany; Cristina is a cheerful and dynamic woman from Bergamo, well known in the region for her botany projects.
Le Iris di Trebecco
In an interview with Sole Ventiquattr’ore, she said that it was her father, an enthusiastic botanist and ornithologist, who passed on his love for botany and gardening to her. Such love first led to the launch of the “Le Iris di Trebecco” project in 2016. When Cristina inherited the family country house, she devoted herself to caring for the garden, revitalising it and specialising in growing irises. Today you can find more than 4,000 irises of at least 105 different colours there.
Cristina has rediscovered joy in the waiting and planning by taking care of plants; this activity has taught her to respect seasonal cycles she was no longer used to as well as to appreciate slow growth processes.
Le Iris di Trebecco was the family’s first project: a grief therapy, as Cristina recalls. Indeed, it was a huge help for the family in overcoming and digesting the great loss of Cristina’s sister, Paola, who was brutally murdered in 2002 when she was only twenty-three. La Biblioteca della natura and the iris garden were both dedicated to Paola, and to all women victims of violence.
The library
Although the garden was a family project, the same cannot be said for the the Biblioteca della Natura —this time Cristina has been dreaming big. During the lockdown, unable to go to her beloved garden, she decided to start a second project. She gathered the books her father gave her and added some donations from private entities with the aim of creating a thematic library available to anyone with an interest and a desire to take refuge in a green natural oasis. The aim is for the library to become a real cultural centre, a hub for nature-related workshops and laboratories, a place for internships and thesis writing, a research facility, and a space for emerging artists, aspiring writers and poets working on nature-related topics.
The library will become a creative breeding ground for nature enthusiasts, and we look forward to sharing more about its future developments!
