My grandfather taught me the importance of quality at a very early age, and to this day, highest quality and perfection down to the last detail are my claim and motivation.
For landscape architect Enzo Enea, quality is most important: «Quality encompasses more than materials and the art of their use. Quality is an emotional experience.»
The most important thing is quality. Quality encompasses more than materials and the art of their use. Quality is an emotional experience.
I had this experience for the first time as a child in my family's garden in Italy, when I bit into a peach. Into this sun made flesh, which made me forget all the effort it took to help it grow. Getting up at three in the morning to avoid the heat, the long walks to the garden because the garden was simply where the trees were and not planted in plantations in front of the house for convenience. Forgotten were the tedious ploughing, fetching water, the countless mosquitoes, the thirst, the hunger, the missed football match with friends or the grief about not being able to take the bus to the sea to eat an ice cream.
This peach made me forget all that and made me realize what I want: to carry this experience out into the world. I want to sweat even more for it, I want to walk even longer and get up even earlier. Because I believe that others also get up early and take on marches. But I think not everyone knows why. When they enter my garden, they will know.
My grandfather taught me the importance of quality at a very early age, and to this day, top quality and perfection down to the last detail are my claim and motivation. I later became an industrial designer. But my attachment to nature was too strong, so I decided to leave this profession. My father was a stonemason and imported hand-hewn vessels from potteries. I accompanied him regularly to sculptors and potters for a while and was fascinated by the precision of the craft and the beautiful products that make the landscape around them even more beautiful. The desire arose in me to also embellish the surroundings of these handicraft products and to design the gardens as a whole. Consequently, I studied landscape architecture, then I took over my father's company and consistently developed it into a production facility for gardens as a whole in accordance with my own requirements.
Today, we have commissions from all over the world and are allowed to accompany projects that are as renowned as they are interesting and to design gardens down to the last detail. The unconditional demand for quality has led to the fact that we can really offer everything. Our team includes the best specialists for all trades involved. While the architects think and plan into the future, the experts check the feasibility of the ideas and the craftsmen implement the ideas with the highest quality standards. I want people to love our gardens and I want the gardens to increase the quality of life for people. That is why we always plan in such a way that the inside and outside of a house harmonise and function in everyday life.
So my grandfather, with his feeling for quality and his peaches, gave me a huge gift and enabled me to take the first step on the road to a successful life. There is only one thing I still miss today: I want to bite into such a perfect peach as I did back then in the one that showed me the importance of quality. Never again has any fruit tasted so good to me, and of course, no other piece of fruit has made me so aware. Perhaps I should have kept the core of the peach as a talisman?
This column first appeared in the book "The Best Advice" by Frank Arnold, Midas Publishers, and was approved for publication on this website by Enzo Enea.