The Garden That Teaches Us to Wait

This Sunday, I'll stand in a garden that took 140 years to become what it is. Not because anyone was slow. Because that's how long it takes to grow a masterpiece. 

I’m volunteering with FAI—Italy’s National Trust—at Villa Silvio Mosca in Biella, a place most tourists will never see.

Have you ever seen doorbells like this? Lovely!

It sits in the shadow of the Alps, in a town known for wool mills and rain. The kind of place many of us skip on our way to more photogenic destinations. But here’s what they’re missing: a lesson our accelerated world desperately needs.

In 1889, Silvio Mosca—an engineer who’d made his fortune in textiles—stood on a bare plot of land. He could have hired an architect. Instead, he drew the plans himself. For two years, he personally oversaw every stone, every tree placement, every sightline. He planted a cork oak, exotic and improbable in Piedmont’s climate. He positioned cedars where they’d frame the mountains just so. He created artificial hills to make a small garden feel infinite.

Then came the waiting.

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