Fresh inspiration

Two women and their gardens

School started today in Tuscany—three months and one week after it let out in June. Summers are glorious in Italy, but once September hits and the kiddo is back in school I am so ready for new routines and new rituals to give shape to my days.

The September reset has gotten me thinking about two women I am taking inspiration from as we move into a fresh phase of the year. When I look up from my computer I see them in these two postcards that I collected this summer:

On the left is a drawing and a quote by Niki de Saint Phaelle, whose fever-dream Tuscan tarot garden I visited in July; on the right is the absolutely glowing face of Lady Susana Walton, the creator of the Giardini La Mortella in Ischia.

Both women led astonishingly rich (if very different) lives and their mystical creativity on display in their respective gardens is endlessly inspiring to me.

Susana Walton’s massive Ischia garden, La Mortella, is a true earthly paradise—featuring exotic plants, stunning views of the Forio bay, and a Temple to the Sun celebrating the god Apollo in a most unique and glorious way. Lady Walton, eulogized in The Guardian, is buried in a nymphaeum overlooking the sea, where an inscription reads: ‘This green arbour is dedicated to Susana, who loved tenderly, worked with passion and believed in immortality.’ When I need a moment of inspiration, I take a deep breath (in Italian we say inspirare for inhale!) and think of her dedication, love, passion, and belief in our universal connectedness.

Temple of the Sun, La Mortella, Ischia

Visiting Niki de Saint Phaelle’s 14-acre tarot garden/fun-park in Capalbio (Maremma) this summer was wildly inspirational. Yes, it was positively sweltering but the effect of the massive sculptures that seemed to have leapt straight out of the artist’s subconscious was mesmerizing. Saint Phaelle wanted to prove that women could do monumental installations and she did. ‘Men’s roles seem to give them a great deal more freedom,’ she wrote to a friend, ‘and I was resolved that freedom would be mine.’ Inspiration in spades.

You can read more about Niki de Saint Phalle in this excellent New Yorker profile by Ariel Levy (Levy is another inspirational woman—her memoir The Rules Do Not Apply is gorgeous but extremely harrowing).

Me and two friends outside of The Tower, an archetype often associated with crisis but one that Saint Phaelle preferred to see as ‘divine destruction’—make way for the new!

Would love to hear about where you are finding inspiration this month—please feel free to drop a comment below!