THE INTERVIEW | MASTERS & MUSES | WORLD OF CABANA
Gaia Chaillet Giusti del Giardino lends her talent as a garden designer to many spheres: to the cinema with Luca Guadagnino, to private commissions and, ultimately, to large-scale hotel projects for clients, including Belmond. Her training as a botanist keeps her feet on the ground. She sits down with Cabana to share highlights from an illustrious career in gardens and botany.
INTERVIEW BY SARA PIERDONÀ | MASTERS & MUSES | 4 APRIL 2025
Left: Gaia on a terrace in Milan, photographed by Eugenia Mola di Larissé. Right: Gaia photographed by Stefania Cellini.
The most memorable trip I’ve taken...
I have just returned from Japan and was unspeakably impressed. It seems strange that, for this long overdue trip, I chose winter, but I wanted to see the gardens cleared of crowds. And there is another benefit to looking at bare trees: suddenly the structure, the geometry of the garden, becomes apparent. Japanese gardens have a very very precise framework, and reflecting on the zealous maintenance they require inevitably leads one to develop a great admiration for this people who are so conscientious and in love with nature. During my trip I discovered that the Ginko Biloba and Camphor are two trees that survived the atomic bomb... Isn't that incredible?
The Japanese garden I liked best...
Giou-ji on the outskirts of Kyoto. It is not the grandest nor the most perfect of Japanese gardens, but it is unexpected because the dominant theme is moss. Moss is harder to grow than people think, but in this case it initially propagated because the garden had ended up abandoned and left uncultivated, which is a nice story of redemption. Even the Italian Embassy in Tokyo, which is one of the most beautiful embassies in the world, has a garden to be proud of. It is an old Samurai garden, with all the characteristic elements intact and charmingly divergent from the embassy interior.
The moments that defined my career...
Garden designers usually study as architects, and in this sense my path was anomalous. I graduated in Botany, with a thesis on the historic Giusti Garden, in Verona. I do not know if this unconventional start was ever a disadvantage – it certainly gave me an original point of view. Compared to my colleagues, I realise that I tend to emphasise the intrinsic qualities of plants, their belonging to the land and their resilience, rather than pure aesthetics. This has made my style more ductile, more flexible...without formal rules that must be rigidly adhered to.
Looking back, there were three big events in my career: moving to London in 2002, meeting an Egyptian businessman a few years later, and finally working with Luca Guadagnino. I landed in London tired of the monotony of Belgian life, where my training after my studies had taken place. I worked in Kew Gardens and made the acquaintance of an extraordinary man of science, Martyn Rix (author of botanical encyclopaedias and seed collector), who was looking for help with plant species to photograph. It was a time of great learning, and I absorbed much beauty.
Gaia's sketch for a private garden project for Jose Ignacio in Uruguay, 2014.
My experience in North Africa and in the Middle East, on the other hand, was of an entirely different kind: for the first time, I was called upon to design gardens for hotels and large complexes, and in an arid climate that I did not know at all! I had to learn a new and challenging way of working.
And finally, it is impossible not to mention A Bigger Splash, the film by Guadagnino where I was employed as landscape designer. Our first meeting was bizarre... I was one of his extras in the movie I am Love – I also worked on Call Me by Your Name! Then, as we got to know each other better, he decided to entrust me with a job that once again required me to learn something new: looking at plants and trees as if they were a background, and imagining the landscape as seen within a rectangle. The film was shot on Pantelleria, which in botanical terms is not an easy place...it is a very hot and windy island, and all the props (including the trees) arrived by boat...
The greatest challenge I've overcome...
‘Delivering’ a garden is always an ordeal. Starting a project is exciting and the planting phase is equally wonderful... but because a garden is ideally never finished, closing a project is hard. Even if everything possible has been done, the impression is rarely that you are handing the client something final, because the trees have to grow and inevitably this means years of waiting. I myself only go back to photograph my gardens five or six years after the inauguration.
The object I will never part with...
An old, worn-out encyclopaedia of plants from A to Z and its sister edition with plants divided by flowering seasons. I bought them in England and they always travel with me, to the point that by now they have the cover all dented and peeling off.
The best gift I've ever received...
A trip to India, from a far-sighted person who realised before I did how much I would enjoy Kerala and its nature. But I won't say who.
I would describe my childhood as...
A childhood with a lot of travelling, benefited from a very international context. My mother was the daughter of ambassadors and having divorced parents meant that, for better or worse, I was always on the road. It was certainly not a boring childhood.
Also, one of the most captivating and inspiring constants in my life was the Giardino Giusti, my mother’s family’s private early Renaissance garden, where I spent much of my childhood.
Ideal gardens in three words...
Surprising, harmonious, generous.
My favorite flower market...
La journée des plantes à Courson – today located in Chantilly.
My next weekend destination...
Cairo.
The best advice I've ever been given...
When I began to work, I asked Paolo Pejrone for advice. He told me to visit as many inspiring gardens as possible.
My dream dinner party companion...
New York-based artist, Nicole Wittenberg.
My favorite flower...
Peonies.
Interview by Sara Pierdonà
Images from Stefania Cellini, Eugenia Mola di Larissé, Dario Fusaro and Gaia Chaillet Giusti del Giardino
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