One Philadelphian’s Garden...Italian Style

Story by Laura Beitman
Photos by Michael Hoover

Giacomo Portolese may not have the property he had back in Italy: a 10-acre expanse filled with chestnut trees, an olive grove, and the Mediterranean Sea off in the distance. But that hasn’t stopped the 89-year-old Philadelphia transplant from having a verdant garden here.

Over the last 36 years, Mr. Portolese, a native of Santa Cristina d’Aspromonte, a mountain town in the Calabria region in Southern Italy, has transformed the little yard behind his two-story row house in Chestnut Hill into a dense urban vegetable garden, one that yields enough organic fruits and vegetables to feed at least three families. The elder Portolese speaks little English, so his son Tony helps translate. “What do you call them here...frozen dinners?" Tony notes while standing in his father’s yard. “You won’t find them here.”

Mr. Portolese’s bounty can be seen from the back of any house on the block. Rows of tomato vines and Italian pole beans stretch 12 feet overhead. A large cluster of blood-red hot peppers dangle from a pole to dry. A grape arbor and pear tree arch over his porch.

Wearing a faded-blue work shirt and jeans, Mr. Portolese, who maybe stretches 5 feet tall, navigates around raised beds of broccoli rabe, escarole, Swiss chard, eggplant, celery, and onions. With weathered hands, he picks basil, fennel, rosemary, parsley and oregano from containers. One can see he used recycled tree branches, bamboo and plastic pipes to form the lattice for his vegetables. “My father can find a use for anything,” Tony Portolese notes. “My parents were brought up the hard way. Everything they do is for a reason.”

In 1968 at the age of 50, Portolese and his wife, Antonia, decided to leave Italy to pursue a different life. His brother already lived in Philadelphia so as soon as Portolese had saved enough to buy a home, he got to work on the garden.

Mr. Portolese spends a few hours each morning adding coffee grinds and home-made compost to the soil. He hand picks insects off the leaves. Like any urban gardener, he has to contend with pests, especially raccoons that go after the grapes. “My father doesn’t get beat very easily,” Tony Portolese adds, smiling.

This avid recycler also makes wine in his basement, tends his children’s gardens and hunts for mushrooms in Fairmount Park. All of his harvests go to his three children, 10 grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, and many neighbors and friends who don’t have a garden. He cans the extra. Nothing goes to waste.

Tony Portoleses says while he and his father may miss the beauty of the Old Country, no one could ever imagine what his father would do with his yard. “Just look at this space,” he muses. “It’s beautiful!”

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To enjoy more Italian gardens, visit the 2009 Philadelphia Flower Show, Bella Italia, from March 1 to 8 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. Learn more here.