Netherlands: City farmer transformed approx. 1 mile of company fences into edible garden
Does this initiative deserve national upscaling?
P+ People Planet Profit
23 Aug 2020
Google translation of the story published originally in Dutch:
A kilometer of fencing in a business park where bean stalks climb up, tomato bunches turn red and sunflowers brighten the sterile gray. In Hessenpoort in Zwolle, “Straatboer” Christiaan Kuipers is realizing a unique edible garden this year. The employees of the companies like to stop by during their break. Nothing is better than a freshly picked snack tomato.
It is very special what “De Straatboer” does, especially when you know all those reports that have been written about the greening of business parks. They are soulless gray areas, with at most some sterile turf. Large nature organizations that set beautiful goals together with large entrepreneurial organizations, which were subsequently not heard about.
Scientists from Wageningen also considered making those thousands of kilometers of unused ground surface more sustainable. Many advice followed. But why is nothing happening? Because of problems that never existed, such as fear that a protected animal species will settle on the site, so that trucks are no longer allowed to drive out?
How did Kuipers manage to get permission from his hometown Zwolle at five huge companies to plant annual vegetables and flowers on the inside of the fence? “I just asked,” is his sobering answer. “They liked the idea. I was allowed to start planting immediately. ”
And so he inspects the DHL company site when shunter Berry de Graaf stops his truck and lowers himself from the cab. He has a paper sandwich bag with him. De Graaf already knows exactly where the tomato bushes that have taken root best are and is starting to pick them. “I do this at least twice a week”, he beams. Only him? “No, I know more colleagues who drop by here during the break. No, they never used to. Why would you?” What else do you have to look for here? There are only concrete pavers, so generously sized that at least four colossal trucks can park next to each other without any problems.
With such good agreements with the companies in the Hessenpoort business park, you cannot call Christiaan Kuipers a “guerrilla gardener”, even though he works four days a week at Marjan Minnesma’s “action organization” Urgenda. In fact, he finds the first crop of ‘annuals’ so disappointing that he would rather plant some low fruit trees next year, in the strip of bare ground along the fences. “It’s a bad bean year,” he says. “First all that rain in the spring, then that drought. I have had my own vegetable garden in Friesland since I was a child, but I have never experienced it that badly. ”
He guides some climbing beans who feel like it along the black steel posts of the fence. They are still in bloom, with small red buds. “People wonder: do beans have such beautiful flowers? We are really at the beginning of awareness. Where does our food actually come from? How does it grow? Can it also grow in the city? ”
Pioneer Kuipers realizes its activities with a small budget. The DOEN Foundation is its main donor, “but I am the smallest boy in the class there”. Kuiper can work one day a week from the subsidy, but in practice he is busy three days a week. DOEN is committed to an accelerated protein transition in the Netherlands, from animal to vegetable food. “De Straatboer” is therefore one of many experiments for DOEN, a test to see what reactions from society will be like. Does this initiative deserve national upscaling? It is therefore no coincidence that Kuipers plants climbing beans everywhere, which are an important source of protein. He too would like to know whether people are taking “a meal” home. “With a few of those thick beans you quickly have a portion,” he knows. “I have a garden of six to eight square meters at home and if you see what I get from it…”
The municipality of Zwolle also made a small budget available, especially to revitalize a malfunctioning work of art on Lubeckplein in front of the city office. erijn Vrij created an igloo-like shape of steel and branches a few years ago, with flower boxes underneath. A beautiful natural statement, but the icing on the cake was missing. Well-maintained planters that turn his object into a living green work of art. After the interventions of the Straatboer, it has become a cool shady oasis on hot summer days and in the evening a place where you can find the privacy of a park in a piece of city with a lot of stone. There are still a pile of drinking cups and cans from the night before lying on the benches. Butts on the floor. That is less, but proof that the place has now been put into use.
Kuipers, who studied biology and ecology in Groningen with two masters in energy and environment.
