LA PÉPITE, A RELIC GARDEN

At the back of our studio lies La Pépite, a garden that has lived many lives: a nursery school, a tailoring workshop, an atelier, an administrative office… and, for the last fifty years, a flower shop. Each period has left its trace, contributing to the richness of the place.

Descending four metres below street level, an unexpected ecosystem emerges, crowned by the majestic canopy of Ailanthus altissima, which forms the backdrop to our atelier. Around it, rare and endemic species overlap, living witnesses to the garden’s history since the mid-19th century.

The garden is nourished by a natural underground thread of water, connected to the former Riera of Sant Gervasi. Through the study of historical documentation and the analysis of current topography, we were able to trace its course: this water follows the line of the Torrent of Can Castanyer, feeding our garden from below. In doing so, it reveals an invisible memory of the city and the landscape of Sant Gervasi surrounding La Pépite.

From this understanding of the urban and territorial context, we took the time to document and analyse the site at a closer scale, to understand what had survived and how it related to its surroundings. We found traces of the different activities that had occupied the space; everything spoke of a place that had been lived in, used and transformed.

When we first occupied the space, we considered turning it into our calling card: a Verveine garden showroom, which we conceived, designed and built. But we soon realised that, if this had been a project for a client, what would we have advised? Not to erase everything in order to impose a new aesthetic, but to live with the place and embrace the exceptional nature of this wild urban “bouquet”.

In the end, we decided not to carry out the project we had already developed with collaborators and suppliers. We intervened as little as possible, making the garden comfortable and inhabitable without attempting to homogenise it, embracing the eclectic nature of its plantings and spatial character.

Today, La Pépite is a garden where nature, history, landscape architecture and art coexist; a space that reveals the relationship between poetry and analysis, between creativity and rigour.

 The garden remains a living witness to everything that has happened—and to what may still unfold.