The environmental organization Legambiente, the Baobab Experience migrant center in Rome and students from the Erasmus Student Network have created a small Mediterranean garden with lemons and spices in a field managed by Baobab. The goal is to send a message of welcome, peace, and multiculturalism.

A tree for feeling at home

Legambiente will have a special celebration for the Tree Festival on November 21. "We wanted to make a Mediterranean garden to talk about the values of green spaces and to welcome and integrate those who come to our country. It's a good way to give a social meaning to this festival," said Vanessa Pallucchi of Legambiente.

The initiative was carried out in collaboration with the Erasmus network of students. "It's nice that the voice of Europe is here to meet with a model example of integration and communication," Pallucchi said.

She said Legambiente and Baobab Experience have worked on several initiatives together in recent months. Palluchi said the center is a "symbolic place, meaningful for managing, through ecology, to talk about migrants and recognizing the rights of all." 

Planting a tree has a great symbolic value, Palluchi added. "The idea is to build something useful, a Mediterranean garden with the spices used most in cooking. We hope that this will be, for them, a way to make the center more human, less anonymous and to make them feel at home through plants that unite the people of the Mediterranean," she said.

Treating trauma with a tree

The Mediterranean garden was planted on an island in the middle of a square. Marzia Di Mento of Baobab Experience said the center "really liked the idea that there would be a strong appeal to the sea, the common route (for migrants in Italy)."

The goal was to make a positive and useful space to take care of. "It's important to involve the young men in activities that involve taking care of the places they live, because often they find themselves in situations that are so precarious that they don't think about this aspect," said Di Mento.

She added the garden is an place that can "stir them, bring them to something that does them well in a concrete way, to overcome the wounds to the soul and the traumas..."