In the series of three radio broadcasts Radio Robida: Uncommon Fruits, the Robida collective immerses itself in stories told through the lens of fruit trees, as seen from two different landscapes: the first, Goriška Brda, marked by an almost monoculture of the vine, and the second, the surroundings of Topolò, characterised by abandonment. The sound narratives lead us through three orchards – the orchard of words, the orchard of memories, and the orchard of fragments – where we repeatedly search for those uncommon fruits that sprout in the relationship between plants, landscape, and human beings.

In the first episode, titled The Orchard of Words, we reflect on the relationship between plants, language, and thought. Through a conversation with philosopher Michael Marder and an interpretation of texts from our Orchard of Words, we enter a space where trees are no longer merely the background of human history, but its co-creators. Plants become a starting point for thinking about ethics, politics, and the possibilities of coexistence beyond the human perspective – and the question arises naturally: which are those uncommon fruits of wisdom that we can harvest from a fruit tree?

In the second episode, The Orchard of Memories, we focus on the intertwining of personal and collective memories with fruit trees and the landscape. Through a conversation with Giovanni Coren, a fruit grower and storyteller from the Natisone Valleys, we embark on a journey through lost orchards, forgotten varieties, and sensory memories hidden in the scents and flavours of fruit. The broadcast opens a reflection on labour as a bond between humans and the landscape, and on metabolism as a metaphor for movement, transfer, and transformation – from vine grafts to architectural influences that pass between spaces and generations.

In the third and final episode, The Orchard of Fragments, fruit trees speak through scattered images, fragments, and excerpts. This time, we do not follow them as a neat plantation, but as a network of dispersed fragments – cracks in the bark, broken branches, fallen leaves, and overripe fruits. Each of these fragments carries its own story and its own memory of the past season, as well as the promise of a new one. Through listening, from these dispersed traces emerges a quiet yet living community among trees, people, and places – a network that is never complete but continually expanding.

Together, the three episodes form a sound herbarium of thoughts, memories, and fragments, in which fruit trees become a link between philosophy, memory, and landscape – between what grows, fades, and sprouts again.

The broadcast was produced for RAI Radio Trieste A as part of the Uncommon Fruits project, which is included in the official programme of GO! 2025 and funded by the European Union through the Small Projects Fund GO! 2025 within the Interreg VI-A Italy–Slovenia 2021–2027 programme, managed by EGTC GO. The broadcast is also part of the project Academy of the Margins 2025, realised with the financial support of the Region of Friuli Venezia Giulia.