The Netherlands is one of the world’s largest agricultural exporters, but the small, densely populated country is a sprawling collection of towns and suburbs, with little space for gardens in town, and very little greenbelt in between. As a result, Holland has little gardening culture and most of the population is totally divorced from the process of food production.

However, the concept of permaculture is slowly becoming more fashionable, and several organisations and projects aiming to make the Dutch lifestyle more sustainable are springing up around the country.

In 2009 the program `Foodprint: Food for the City` was launched in The Hague, with the aim of assessing the impact that food production can have on the planning, design and culture of a city. Created by Stroom Den Haag, the program is sponsored by the city council and supported by many regional and local organisations who provide the money, knowledge and volunteers needed to keep the projects running.

Foodprint has invited artists and architects from around the world to submit proposals for projects, highlighting the value of sustainable living and involving the local people, entrepreneurs, food experts and farmers. The result is an an array of diverse projects, ranging from practical applications of permaculture techniques to abstract and thought-provoking art installations.

One of the Foodprint projects is The Hague’s Edible Park, the brainchild of Nils Norman, a London-born artist and advocate of sustainable living, whose aim with this artwork is to demonstrate what green architecture and permaculture can contribute to a city like The Hague.

The concept is spread over two locations in the center of town and comprises different types of gardens, a pavilion built using sustainable materials and a series of activities which will promote and teach sustainable living techniques.

Photo: Stroom Den Haag

The first location of the Edible Park is the Hague’s Zuiderpark, one of the city’s largest parks, where the locals go to relax, play sports, enjoy pop concerts or open air theater, and try out their new tents before the summer camping season.

The project is located on the grounds of the Herweijerhoeve city farm in the Zuiderpark, and covers around 800 square meters. The local community was closely involved in the design and landscaping of the large permaculture garden, which is split into different areas, each demonstrating ideas applicable in the small town gardens and on the patios and balconies of The Hague residents.

Small plots dotted around the garden are dedicated to forest gardening, where dwarf fruit trees have been planted alongside aromatic herbs, vegetables and medicinal plants, all carefully chosen to provide a good habitat for the local animals and insects.

There is a section set aside for a container garden demonstrating the potential of small-scale vegetable gardening, and several teaching gardens which will allow students to apply the different permaculture techniques they have been taught.

Certain areas have also been set up to demonstrate different environmentally-friendly techniques such as composting, the collection and filtration of rainwater, and soil-cleaning.

The eye-catching centerpiece of the permaculture garden is a temporary pavilion, designed by architect Michael Post. The structure is made entirely from durable materials;
its foundations are made of paving stones, its frame from wood, the floors from rammed earth and the walls from bales of straw plastered with loam, using techniques perfected in the American state of Nebraska. The roof has a wood frame and is covered in straw, which is in turn covered with a living layer of sedum, grass and herbs.

The pavilion was built during a series of workshops in which students and volunteers were taught how to apply construction techniques seldom used in The Netherlands. It was built to act as a storage facility and break room for the gardening volunteers, as well as a visitor information center and a place to hold workshops, presentations and lectures.

On the Stroom Den Haag website, text by Nils Norman discusses what projects such as the Edible Park can mean for cities of the future.

“Systems like permaculture, forest gardening, urban forestry, deep ecology, transition towns, bioregionalism, eco-communalism and urban-agriculture are becoming increasingly popular. They are usually regional, small-scale community driven projects that exist outside and sometimes in opposition to official planning codes, regulations and government departments,” Norman writes.

Photo: Stroom Den Haag

“The Foodprint project and the two chosen sites of the Zuider Park and the Nut en Genoegen allotment garden offer a unique opportunity to implement this experiment to theoretically expand a localised strategy onto a larger urban-wide scale.

“The activity program such as the symposium on October 22, 2010 and practical workshops on the sites that are part of Edible Park are designed to explore the possibilities of Permaculture as a viable alternative to conventional city planning, architecture and urban design paradigms. Exploring and testing its utopian character and the contradictions inherent to any proposed localised ecological solution to a global crisis.”

The Zuiderpark´s Edible Park was officially opened on the 22nd of October 2010 and is set to remain open for five years, offering courses in permaculture and practical workshops in gardening and sustainable living techniques.

The second location of the Edible Park project is on the allotments belonging to the amateur gardener´s association `Nut en Genoegen´, where a section of previously unused land is currently being transformed into a public garden which will include a playground, a pond and a butterfly garden.

A garden dedicated to permaculture will also be created in another section of the allotments, with an area in the middle designed to function as a meeting point where volunteers, students and members of the gardeners´ association can gather to plan and execute the maintenance of the gardens.

The landscaping and planting of trees and bushes began in October, and the gardens should be completed in 2011.

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