Open space today is increasingly disrupted and altered, heterogeneous and articulated by innumerable folds that generate different patches. However, new developments in ecology show that it is often anthropogenic disturbances that unexpectedly bring forth new ways for living beings to coexist. The story of GiadA (Garden of Social Friendship) that we tell in this article is set in a territory in south-eastern Sicily that has been profoundly disturbed, in which fragments of woodland are intertwined with different forms of agriculture and relics of the Second World War. After having been first built in the Vatican Pavilion Social Friendship: meeting in the garden set up on the island of San Giorgio for the Venice Biennale 2023, thanks to the cooperation between various actors, the garden was ‘transferred’ to the ancient forest of Santo Pietro in Caltagirone, with the intention of creating a threshold between village and forest, a transitional space in which relations between ecosystems and assemblages between worlds are activated and multiplied, transformed into significant events for evolution.