The Italian Garden Project Foundation

Legacy Fig Tree Collection

The fig is a revered fruit to Italian Americans. It adapts and thrives in a land not its own, much like the immigrants themselves. Growing a fig tree when they arrived in the US was a way for our uprooted ancestors to have a small piece of the Old World in the New.  Many of their American born children and grandchildren now proudly associate the fig with their immigrant heritage. The fig tree has become a symbol of these hard-working immigrants who lived in close connection with the earth and brought with them a lifestyle of self-sufficiency and a reverence for growing and preparing food.  This increasingly relevant and timely aspect of our heritage serves to engage and excite a new generation who can look to these voices of the past to guide them into a brighter, more sustainable future. The fig trees planted and cared for by our immigrant ancestors are the true treasures of all Italian Americans.  The Legacy Fig Tree Collection will preserve these living heirlooms and honor the humble heroes who grew them.   

The Legacy Fig Tree Collection will be grown and exhibited in a garden composed of 10 to 12 fig trees acquired from Italian Americans across the country, selected to represent major areas of emigration from the Italian peninsula and the two major waves of immigration, late 1800s - early 1900s and Post WWII. The Collection will include trees grown by Italian Americans in the United States for at least 25 years, most with known origins in Italy. We will collect at least one tree from each of the following areas: Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, New Orleans, Chicago, Kansas City, San Francisco/Bay Area, Los Angeles, and St. Louis.  To ensure that these heirloom trees are not lost to natural causes, especially in the harsh growing conditions of the Eastern US, we will propagate new trees from each tree in the Collection. This duplicate collection will be grown on the West Coast where they can grow larger and can thrive in a more hospitable climate.

For each tree in the Collection, we will record an oral history, documenting the tree’s story and, most importantly, the story of the gardener who nurtured it.  Plaques honoring these gardeners will label each tree. A five-minute video about each tree, accessible via a mobile phone app, will be developed to allow for a guided walking tour experience of the garden collection.  The archival material generated by the project in the form of oral histories, photographs, and video will be housed by a research and educational institution such as the Calandra Institute at CUNY, the Heinz History Center Italian American Program, or a major Italian American cultural organization such as National Italian American Foundation.