We All Had Big Gardens takes its title from a recollection recorded by researcher Brenda Giannotti Stankus, who documented the history of Italian migration to Richmond, Virginia. In one interview, a descendant of the first Italian families remembered: “We all had big gardens - there wasn’t an Italian in town who didn’t have a garden.”
That simple phrase evokes the resilience of a community that built new roots far from home. Between 1900 and 1923, more than a hundred Italian families - many from Tuscany - settled in Richmond, drawn by hope, work and a better life. They built homes in North Highland Park, raised families, shared meals, and cultivated backyard gardens that echoed the landscapes they had left behind.
This piece traces their story not as nostalgia, but as motion: the crossing of an ocean, the struggle to belong, and the transformation of memory into new soil. Its orchestral textures move between stillness and vitality - like the seasons of a garden - suggesting how migration reshapes both land and identity, and how the act of tending, in every sense, becomes a way to stay alive.
I furthermore wish to express my gratitude to Maria Sakovich, author of La Nostra Storia: Italian Americans in Richmond, whose research and the oral histories she collected have been indispensable in reconstructing the voices and experiences of Richmond’s Italian community.
