Francesca Castagnetti and Andrea Popjordanova present a collaborative publication about Vartopo, questioning the notions of beauty and usefulness in our relationship with land and plants. Vartopo is a vast meadow on the outskirts of Sofia—neither city nor garden. The book explores the human tendency to collect, name, and classify, and it raises questions about the language we use when we speak or write about plants, as well as the value we assign to them.
Rooted in herbariums and botanical guides, the publication also challenges these formats and the way they mediate our connection to the plant world. “A Useless Guide to Vartopo and Its Weeds” is an invitation to walk through and encounter a place through one’s own senses and impressions.
Related event: Neither a city, nor a garden
Read the conversation on the Journal for Social Vision
A Useless Guide to Vartopo and Its Weeds
Concept and text: Andrea Popjordanova and Francesca Castagnetti
Illustrations: Andrea Popjordanova
In English with a supplement of translation in Bulgarian
print run: 100 copies
Published by: Center for Social Vision within the project “New Ecologies” (2023)
Price: 28 BGN (sold out)
Francesca Castagnetti is an ethnobotanist at the Centre for Biocultural Diversity in Kent and a traditional herbalism trainee. Her work bridges ethnobotany, herbalism, and culture.
Andrea Popjordanova is an artist whose creative practice moves between illustration, books, and graphic design. She is interested in how people live, the impact they have on the spaces they inhabit, and how they relate to them.
This project was carried out within the framework of Culture Moves Europe and was made possible with the financial support of the European Union. The views expressed here do not reflect the official opinion of the European Union.
New Ecologies is supported by the Visual Arts Program of the Ministry of Culture and the One-Year Grant of the National Culture Fund of Bulgaria.
