Image

PROFILES

Ils sont artiste, cheffe étoilée, designer ou apiculteur, pilote automobile ou créatrice de mode. Leur point commun ? Ces personnalités glamour ou au cœur de la vie culturelle, économique et sociale régionale sont les moteurs de l’actualité azuréenne. Découvrez sans filtre le témoignage de leur parcours, leurs rêves, leurs ambitions et leurs projets à venir.

June 2021

Jessica Sbaraglia

In love with urban gardens

Jessica Sbaraglia wants every city dweller to have a lush and delicious green space, so she advocates for urban gardening and has created rooftop vegetable gardens everywhere from her native Switzerland to Monaco to Nice.

By Caroline Stefani
Image
Image
Potagers urbains perchés, ruches, poulaillers…   Jessica Sbaraglia développe au cœur des villes de véritables éco-systèmes où la nature reprend ses droits.

An ecologist at heart, Jessica began promoting urban harvests long before vegetable gardens became a trend. The company she created five years ago, recently renamed Terrae, uses organic farming and permaculture techniques to grow vegetables on rooftops and in urban plots. Terrae is already up and running in Monaco and Switzerland, now it is coming to Nice. As part of the Joia Méridia eco-neighbourhood project, eight rooftops with 2000 m2 of space for vegetable gardens and orchards will be made available to the people of Nice by 2023/2024. The ecosystem will include garden plots, greenhouses, beehives and even chicken coops! There will also be a bar and restaurant, and a programme of activities that combine learning and fun—an all-around experience. “In the morning, when there is just a little chill in the air, you can come and do your shopping on our terrace, surrounded by fruits and vegetables. Then bring your children to a ‘grow your own seedlings’workshop. At lunchtime, you can enjoy one of our fresh salads before moving on to a yoga class taught right in our orchard. And in the evening, it’s wine-tasting, accompanied by finger sandwiches made of edible flowers… The goal is to create (or re-create) social ties in an atypical, ecological setting infused with meaning.”

Back to basics
A former tennis player, model and designer, Jessica Sbaraglia seems to have lived many lives before becoming a ‘green revolutionary’ “None of my experiences brought me real and lasting happiness. The day I realised that, I started asking myself the right questions”, she says. In the end, it was Jessica’s memories of her childhood vegetable garden that sparked her new life. “I started small, gardening on my tiny balcony. I found it a healing experience, and soon took over my neighbour’s terrace and then the terrace of the building across the street! Now Terrae is involved in many activities, such as a therapeutic vegetable garden at the Centre Hospitalier Princesse Grace (CHPG) in cooperation with the psychiatric department. Other gardens have been planted at schools, or in partnership with Michelin-starred chefs such as Marcel Ravin at Monte-Carlo Bay and Mauro Colagreco at Mirazur. Gardeners and chefs are both passionate about what they do. The gardener must understand the chef’s needs, and the chef must understand that some things, like bad weather, are beyond one’s control. There is a kind of communion between the two.”

www.terredemonaco.com

Image

Share

+ de portraits