Pia Pera’s Poetics of the Planetary Garden

ABSTRACT This article explores Pia Pera’s poetics of the garden. As the first in-depth study of Pera’s work on the subject, it aims to position her as an original voice within contemporary (garden) writing and to locate garden writing in relation to current ecological, ecocritical, and environmental debates. By drawing on philosophy, aesthetics, and critical plant studies, I demonstrate how Pera’s work engages both with the aesthetic tradition of garden representation and with ecocritical concerns. In particular, I discuss how Pera establishes a close dialogue with Gilles Clément’s ‘humanist ecology’, in order to shape her ‘orto/giardino’ as a ‘planetary garden’. Through an analysis of her main garden books, I show how Pera fashions herself as a ‘scrittrice-giardiniera’ while proposing a virtuous example of care for the planet that recognises the centrality of plants in our world.