PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ITALIAN GARDEN PROJECT
Mary Menniti wants to see her Italian roots (and yours!) sprout up in gardens throughout the United States.In 2011, the Sewickley resident founded The Italian Garden Project, a nonprofit that documents, preserves and shares the agrarian culture of Italian-Americans, including both sets of her grandparents.
As a child, Menniti followed her grandfather around his New Castle vegetable patch, weaving between the rows of tomatoes, peppers, pole beans, Swiss chard, garlic, fennel and fig trees. In turn, she learned what his life was like back in the province of Caserta.
Pittsburghers can sample the bounty of local Italian-American gardens at Fig Fest on Sept. 14 at Robin Hill Park in Moon. From 2 to 5:30 p.m., there will be food, wine, music, kids’ activities and demonstrations on everything from ancestral gardening practices to how to crack olives. There will even be a traditional Pittsburgh cookie table, but the figs will take center stage.
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ITALIAN GARDEN PROJECT
If your only connection to the sweet, teardrop-shaped fruit is in the form of a Nabisco Newton, you’ve been missing out on a lot more than dietary fiber, iron and potassium.
“Figs meant survival,” Menniti says. “A lot of immigrants in the 1800s would come here with starts of fig trees sewn into the lining of their coats and skirts. If you grew a fig tree, you’d have crops in the summer and you could dry them and eat them in the winter. They made this Mediterranean fruit survive in an inhospitable climate. The fig tree is as resilient and adaptable as the immigrants.”
Through the organization’s Legacy Fig Collection, living heirlooms are being acquired from Italian-American gardens in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Chicago, Kansas City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, St. Louis and Pittsburgh.
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ITALIAN GARDEN PROJECT
Menniti, an Italian citizen who has a farmhouse in Pacentro in Central Italy, not only wants to teach Americans about heirloom fruits and vegetables, but provide a valuable lesson on the folks who cultivated them. With help from Truelove Seeds in Portland, Oregon. The Italian Garden Project has preserved more than 55 varieties of seeds and personal stories.
Menniti says gardening using Old World techniques not only keeps her young, it keeps the memory of her grandparents alive.
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