The light-bulb moment that led to the creation of this daredevil garden on a windswept island in the middle of the Mediterranean occurred in the mid-1980s, when the Swiss-based, American-born Yoyo Bischofberger picked up a Memphis catalogue designed by Ettore Sottsass and felt her heart going up in flames. Since the early 1970s Yoyo and her husband, the legendary Swiss art dealer Bruno Bischofberger, had been indulging their shared passion for collecting. These included works by the leading artists of the past 40 years – most of whom, like Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, were close friends – as well as folk art; photography, prehistoric artefacts and 20th-century design, including 1950s glass. Brandishing the catalogue, Yoyo announced: ‘We need to collect this work!’ So off they went to Milan to meet the Memphis designer in person. ‘It was a sudden friendship,’ Yoyo recalls, ‘a deep connection.’ Not long after, Sottsass, who years later would design the Bischofbergers’ Postmodern, art-filled home in Zurich, asked his new friends to join him and his wife Barbara Radice, on a car trip in southern Italy. This was followed by excursions on camels in the North African deserts. One day Yoyo asked Ettore where he spent the summer: ‘On the Aeolian island of Filicudi,’ the architect replied.
The Aeolian archipelago, which takes its name from Aeolus, god of the winds, is not a place for the faint of heart. Reaching any one of these volcanic islands off the northeastern coast of Sicily, swept as they are by unpredictable winds and currents, often requires an act of faith. The red-hot lava and clouds of ash that occasionally erupt from the area’s two remaining active volcanoes, Stromboli and Vulcano, infuse the Aeolian experience with a mysterious turbulence. Filicudi, situated on the far reaches of the archipelago like a comet’s tail, is the wildest of the seven islands. The absence of natural water sources, the scorching sun and steep mountain slopes made life here so hard that by the 1960s most of the population had emigrated. In time Filicudi, with its fennel-scented air, pristine sea, 200 inhabitants and abandoned houses, became a magnet for artists and intellectuals. So, when Sottsass and Radice invited Yoyo and Bruno to their home in 1992, they jumped at the opportunity. ‘We slept in a tiny twin bedroom right next to theirs,’ Yoyo recalls. ‘The heat was tremendous, and I was eaten alive by mosquitoes, but the experience was fantastic: we explored the island by boat, we hiked, we swam. The food was delicious. One doesn’t need much more than that.’ At the end of their stay, she leaned out of the bedroom window to photograph an ancient tower. Little did she know that ten years later, that tower would be hers and the land around it the site of her very own Shangrila.
Fortino Cactus (Yoyo named it after the existing fort-like structure and the plants she bedded in around it) is perched on the south-facing side of Filicudi’s cone-shaped mountain. With its compact, squared-off structure and thick walls designed to survive the raw intensity of the Sicilian sunlight, it is a classic example of Aeolian architecture. Yoyo introduced plumbing and electricity (which only arrived here in the late 1980s), opened a door or two and painted the exteriors a bright turquoise: a colour Sottsass liked to take credit for. The architect, who died in 2007, never saw the finished project, but he would have approved of Yoyo’s lightness of touch and admired the way she adapted to the island’s stark way of life. Not obvious for someone used to the cool breeze and comforts of homes in Zurich and Saint-Moritz. ‘I find it interesting,’ she explains, ‘how foreigners coming to Filicudi actually want life on this island to be difficult. We don’t mind the chaos; we don’t care if the phones don’t work. No more water in the cistern? Tough luck!’
When it came to planting a garden, Yoyo’s initial laissez-faire attitude (‘I thought I would be happy with just some grasses flowing in the wind,’ she says) soon morphed into something radically different. Impatient to have a garden as quickly as possible, with plants that could survive the heat and the drought, and mindful of Bruno’s own appreciation of cactuses, Yoyo set off to Vivai Cuba, a nursery near Syracuse with an extensive collection of succulent plants. Impressed by the knowledge of owner Pieter di Paola, who had travelled the world in search of rare species, she invited him to see her property. Di Paola returned a few days later with two trucks filled with hundreds of succulents of all shapes and sizes. As they made their way up the mountain, the trucks got stuck. Many of the islanders, curious to see what Yoyo was up to, helped bring the plants to their destination.
‘I had no idea what I was getting myself into,’ Yoyo confesses. ‘I figured I would just let myself be surprised.’ The soul of this garden, she insists, is Pieter’s. It was he who selected the most adaptable species and planted them. That may be the case, but Yoyo Bischofberger is a collector and a nominalist. Her affinity for making lists and collecting data helped her put together Jean Tinguely’s monumental three-volume catalogue raisonné. She also created the Seafoodpedia app, a reference guide. So, when she saw the harmonious mixture of colours and textures Pieter had created at Fortino, she stirred things up by rearranging the plants in groups, or ‘families’: the primitive agaves to one side, the tall and slender ‘columnar’ cacti against a dry-stone wall, the ‘globular’ shapes nearer the house and a collection of ‘hairy’ ones towards the end of the garden. ‘They are all such characters!’ she says. The point of view was just as important: the paths that wind their way around the 1 acre garden are deep, so that the viewer can gaze up towards the prickly skyline.
Yoyo returns to check on her garden several times a year; sometimes with Bruno, or with their children and grandchildren, and often alone. She says it is like a big meditation. ‘Who’d have thought,’ she muses, ‘that someone who hates eating fish and is terrified by natural disasters would plonk herself on a volcanic island taking care of cactuses?’ The islanders are just as surprised. For ten years they ignored her, convinced she wouldn’t survive for more than a couple of seasons. Nowadays, every time she sets foot on her island, they greet her with affection: ‘Ciao Yoyo! Bentornata Yoyo!’ Her resilience has won her a special place here.
Vivai Cuba, Viale dei Lidi, 224, 96100 Fontane Bianche SR, Italy. Details: visit vivaicuba.com, or Instagram @vivaicuba
A version of this article appears in the July 2023 issue of The World of Interiors. Learn more about our subscription offers
