We are Rita Colozzi Sydney born and raised and Ralph Westbury a Geelong boy, two Australians who felt a longing for deeper connection—a place where community wasn’t just a concept but a daily rhythm. Drawn by the dream of creating a home in Italy, we discovered Villa Ulivella in Anticoli Corrado, a village once pulsing with artistic life.

Without ever setting foot inside the villa or the village, we bought the villa online in 2022 and, within ten months, uprooted ours lives with our two dogs, from Australia to Italy in February 2023. The move was bold, but serendipitous: the villa’s layered history—from noble English roots to Mussolini’s rumored lunches—mirrored their own blend of heritage and vision. Now, nestled in the Aniene Valley about an hour drive from Rome, we are restoring not just walls and gardens, but a spirit of creativity and community.

I love art, any art, even the art I dislike. Art is very personal and we all interpret it in our own way. From the masters to the classics and contemporary. This isn’t an article about art but more about preserving it…for future generations.

And by preserving it, I mean saving it from landfill.

We should should all take a trip out to see a dump. It should be part of school excursions. I had never seen landfill for myself until I moved to Canberra, the Australian Capital. I paid a visit to what everyone called the Junk Shop. They are actually now called the The Green Shed, they are warehouse that is linked to the local rubbish tip where trailer loads are dropped off everyday. It was a sight! Mountains of rubbish and from the line up of cars waiting to dump more I was just overwhelmed, I was really quite lost for words. The Green Shed does its best to salvage what is can and resell with most proceeds going to local charities.

Canberra has been quoted as being the nation’s best recyclers, but we shouldn’t be complacent. The equivalent of approximately 350,000 kerbside bins goes to landfill each week, including bulk domestic waste. The sad fact is that at least half of this waste could be recycled or re-used.

And as the population of the city grows the volume of Canberra’s landfill is increasing, despite the efforts of the waste management services trying to reduce, re-use and recycle. Still over 200,000 tonnes of waste from domestic, commercial and industrial sources are currently going into landfill each year.

Those with a conscious and aware of their environment and footprint will for items that have some value makes efforts to resell or donate to one of the many charity shops reselling used goods to benefit charity. It makes you feel good, doesn’t it? because its the little bit we can do for our community and the environment in an ever increasing disposable world.

There is a greater awareness with footage of land fill reaching its limits, stock piles of unwanted goods, the problem is worldwide and there is an ever increasing awareness of how much we all throw out. The world cant sustain this and what doesn’t end up in land fill is ending up in our oceans and waterways. We have all seen the pictures! Its quite devastating to see. We must change and it is not just governments responsibility, its industry and the consumers who make make a real difference. We must all try and make a change for future generations. At home we have made some changes to composting and limiting how much plastic packaged items we buy.. in doing so we have actually saved money. But that stories for another time.

During one of my many visits to the Green Shed I came across piles of art collecting dust. I rummaged through them and yes, there were a few that I thought..really? Someone owned this! but then I stumbled across some paintings, originals that someone painted in 1921 and 1937. I felt sad, someone would have been so proud of their paintings and now it was left as junk. It is not the sort of art I would hang in my home but I felt that it needed a place to be displayed. So I bought them for next to nothing and took them home.

This is how I chose to display them. I know over time they will fade and decompose and end up as nothing but at least they are still being appreciated and brighten up the garden and my day.

This is my garden’s art.

Gardening has become my respite from the everyday grind it is good for the soul they say, and its TRUE! Every morning and evening I walk around our modest garden, I potter around, a bit of weeding, checking on all the plants and observing any changes. Picking what vegetables are ready for the table that I can include in the evening meal. As wonderful as Gardens with all its flowers, trees and vegetables there comes plenty of insects. I have always been curious about nature but somewhat jumpy about insects, that is until I took up gardening.

For me gardening was not love at first sight, because of the insects! My first year in Canberra tackling the garden did not start well. I was stung by a bee, almost eaten alive by mosquitoes lurking in the dark corners of the garden. I lost my crop of broccoli to cabbage moth larvae and tomatoes were eaten by worms and the year after, the rats ate all our broad beans, there was nothing fun about gardening at all! I persevered learning along the way from reading lots of books, expert advice and keen gardening colleagues tips and soon I was on my way to enjoying it and yielding a steady supply of edibles.

Nothing beats that wonderful feeling of accomplishment when you pick a bowl of tomatoes that you have grown yourself or crushing the garlic you cultivated from one single clove or picking at the sweetest strawberries you will ever taste. The pleasure from picking a bunch of flowers as a centrepiece for your dining table and making relish, jam or pickles with your excess produce. My first gifting of tomato relish jars left me feeling quite chuffed that I could say I made that. My absolute personal treat every year is picking the first juicy fig right off the tree in the backyard. YES!! I beat the possum this year!

• 

No Chemicals are used at all in our garden so we try any natural methods available. This can be time consuming as it does require you to inspect your crop, remove caterpillars or worms from broccoli leaves or tomatoes. The time spent monitoring our crop it’s quite relaxing for me and it is when I noticed so many insects are actually doing the job for us. I learnt quickly that nature is just as hungry as we are. Lady bugs galore eating the aphids, soldier beetles patrolling for small meals. Bees buzzing around pollinating my crops of from broccoli to cherries. Spiders weaving their webs in between plants catching the moths hopefully before they lay their larvae. We work in situ but sometimes soapy water sprayed on the broccoli or cabbage leaves can be a deterrent for the nasties. But this year I have discovered a family of sparrows visiting my garden regularly for those worms and caterpillars. They are not native bird species to Australia but I am not objecting when they are serving a purpose in my garden. I suspect we have a lizard lurking somewhere as we have had little to no problem with snails. I am ok with that.

When I get deep into gardening it is almost like a part of the family, you nurture and care for your plants. You watch them grow from seed, becoming ever impatient for the first sprout to appear. Making sure they are watered and fed, you worry when the weather changes from searing heat to frosty mornings, during summer waking up at sunrise to water or staying out late into the cool evenings. In winter you run out in 2 degrees after the evening weather report to make sure you have covered your sensitive plants to protect from the incoming -7 degree frosty morning ahead. You shelter them to protect them from predators who surface at night to take them away.

Gardening is not for everyone you need to invest a lot of time for a productive garden and in return to you will get a thing of beauty, a retreat and fresh food. Ours is forever a work in progress and I am still learning so much.

Nature is just marvellous and balanced so long as we dont interfere with it, sometimes giving a helping hand but we must learn when to walk away. So at my home we all live quite happily together even with my new admiration for insects there are still some I prefer to observe at a distance. But never for butterflies.

• 

In our disposable society we, that is, myself and my husband Raffaelle have chosen to salvage almost everything that decorates our home. I would not say we never purchase new items but its becoming an increasingly rare occurrence. In a time where we are becoming more conscious of our environment and the footprint we make in it I am proud of what we have achieved. It is also, to be honest, trendy! When we started over 15 years ago it was just starting to trend I noticed that consumers were buying new items that looked old. I loved the idea but I couldn’t bring myself to buy it if I could source the second hand version or similar already available that was beautifully crafted, made to last and could be recycled and given another life.

Vintage, retro, antique, collectable, secondhand whatever you call them, these items had a life once, a family and a home. The wonderful thing for me is about the stories that may come with some of the pieces. As a starter, here are just some of my favorite pieces from our home that were all salvaged from the local junk shop, op shop or purchased secondhand. Thanks for taking the time to read. and I hope that as I go along with this blog we can share ideas, objects and stories about recycling for the home.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton