Lagoon gardens for Venice: between emerged and submerged landscapes

April - September 2025 | Venice and their lagoon

At the Sant’Elena water-bus stop, near the Penzo Stadium, one only needs to glance toward the lagoon to discover a submerged world: silent, yet full of life. From the seabed, thin, brown tentacles rise and sway in the water. They look like ears of wheat, but they are colonies of Sargasso, a seaweed that arrived in the lagoon in the 1980s.

Following the edge of Istrian stone, where the canal forms a landing step, a vivid green carpet opens up. It’s not grass: it’s Ulva, a native seaweed that inhabits these shallow waters throughout the year. It grows in silence, nourished by light, attuned to the rhythm of the tides.

In this space where land and water meet without truly dividing, even the lagoon’s floor becomes a garden. But if these are gardens—submerged, shifting, alive—then who tends them? How do we, whether residents or visitors, learn to care for this subtle and precarious ecology? What forms of kinship and stewardship might emerge between the unseen underwater soils and the visible, cultivated ones—so rare, so vital—in a city as amphibious as Venice?

From these questions arises the fourth edition of Convivial Tables, a field research project by TBA21–Academy at Ocean Space, dedicated to the relations between food and ecology, and to their impact on aquatic bodies. Curated by Chiara Famengo in collaboration with Barena Bianca and TOCIA!, the project has been made possible thanks to the support of Venezia FC through the Flow Together campaign.

Between April and September 2025, the project turns its attention to the making of lagoon gardens: living assemblages where submerged worlds interlace with the human gestures of cultivating, cooking, and dwelling in Venice, both past and present. These gardens are not metaphors, but zones of care, reciprocity, and cohabitation.

The Project

The heart of the project takes shape within ancient vieri—large wooden caissons still used today for the breeding of moeche, the small crabs that embody the traditions of Venetian aquaculture. Within these containers, mobile gardens will be cultivated, nourished by a marine compost: a living matter composed of algae, shells, sediment, and soil. This material will be assembled through three collective public interventions—gestures of gathering that interweave participatory practices, situated knowledge, and the ecological memory of the lagoon.

In April, accompanied by marine biologist Bruno La Rocca, the collection of algae began. Along the walk, each species encountered was observed, named, and told—an act of recognition and restitution, offering visibility and narrative to these submerged beings, so often silenced or ignored. Through this naming, they are reintroduced into the realm of shared attention and imagination.

In June, a visit to the Casone di Valle Millecampi offered a chance to meet with fisherman Devy Chinazzi and explore his submerged clam gardens. Among inherited techniques and looming ecological uncertainties, shells and stories were collected—living archives of the lagoon’s entangled lifeforms and the precarious symbiosis that sustains them.

In July, the final activation will take the form of a collective embroidery workshop led by Emi Bio Design. Seaweed, shells, and other elements of the lagoon will be interwoven to create the tablecloth of Convivial Tables: a choral composition, a new ritual dedicated to the lagoon. Here, the vieri will finally be activated, and the compost will begin to take shape—layer after layer, seaweed after clam.

Alongside the vieri, during these same months, a seaweed dryer will be constructed: a light, open structure inspired by fishermen’s nets stretched out to dry in the sun. The natural saltmarshes around Lazzaretto Nuovo, an island managed by the associations Ekos Club and Archeoclub di Venezia, will host the curing of algae such as Undaria pinnatifida (wakame) and Sargassum muticum (sargassum), left to the wind and sun before being folded back into the compost as a gesture of renewal. Algae like sargassum thrive in the lagoon in part due to nutrient runoff from the mainland. Harvesting them and returning their matter to the soil is a way of closing the loop: offering back to the land what was taken from it, and allowing it to nourish life anew.

Upcoming public activations and sagra dell’alga (seaweed festival)

The programme will conclude in September with two important events.

From 6 to 20 September, the seaweed dryer will be on display at Lazzaretto Nuovo, home to the Ecomuseo dei Lazzaretti Veneziani. Guided tours, including access to the dryer, will be available by reservation. It’s an opportunity to get closer to the drying process and uncover the stories it holds.

On 27 September, Convivial Tables will be celebrated in campo with the seaweed festival at Ocean Space, where the lagoon gardens will be officially unveiled. During the day, traditional lagoon medicinal herbs—such as rosemary, laurel, and artemisia—will be planted in the compost. The festival will be a celebration, a gesture of restitution open to the entire Venetian community, a participatory and convivial occasion: between tastings inspired by the flavours of the lagoon and opportunities for exchange, the city will welcome the return of submerged worlds into its urban fabric.

At the close of the programme, the two sea gardens will be donated to organisations dedicated to their care and flourishing. One will be entrusted to the association VERAS (Vignole Energia Rinnovabile Agricoltura Sana), which will activate it as a site for educational encounters, especially with children. The other will remain in the care of the Laguna nel Bicchiere community, which will continue to cultivate the living interstice between water and land in the Sant’Elena neighbourhood.

Contacts / Further Info

Convivial Tables: shifting landscapes is the fourth edition of TBA21–Academy’s field research program at Ocean Space, dedicated to food and ecology.
Curated by Chiara Famengo with Barena Bianca and TOCIA!
Supported by the Flow Together campaign of Venezia FC