Patchwork Garden

Patchwork Garden

Patchwork Garden

Patchwork Garden

Patchwork Garden

Patchwork Garden

Patchwork Garden

Patchwork Garden

Patchwork Garden

Patchwork Garden

Patchwork Garden

The Patchwork Garden

The ‘Prize for a transposable garden’ has been awarded to the Dutch entry ‘The Patchwork Garden’ by Annelies Dijkman and Lau Heemkskerk. It is the prize for the garden that offers the most inspiration and opportunities for visitors to try it out in their own garden.
‘Resilient garden’ is the theme of the international garden festival in Chaumont-sur-Loire in 2023.
Climate change has a huge impact on our living environment and also on the garden. The question is how and if a garden can be resilient in these changing circumstances.
The Patchwork Garden is based on the resilience of people. It is a sensory garden, where you can experience the beauty of plants, but also a functional garden, as all plants have edible parts. Think of the flower of the nasturtium, the bulb of the tulip, or the seeds of the sunflower. In a landscape structure, the plants are placed in a multi-coloured repetitive pattern. The whole looks like a patchwork, where each plant has its own compartment, and the visitor can zoom in on details.
A self-sufficient place, where you can take care of yourself, but also a paradise for biodiversity, where bees and butterflies find their way.

Team: Annelies Dijkman, Lau Heemskerk
Special thanks to: Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire, Kwekerij de Ent, Kwekerij Ron, Leo Ruhe, Max Kroes, Regina de Haas, Frans Dekker, John Kroes, June Heemskerk, Xander Heemskerk

Publicity

More info: Festival International des Jardins

‘Puzzelstuk’ garden

With thanks to the municipality of Leiden.

Residents and location

‘Puzzelstuk’ is a new residential care complex where sixteen autistic young adults with a low IQ or other disability live. They have their own studio, shared living rooms and share a large garden around the building. The group is unable to live and work independently and requires guidance and care. The goal is that they can be part of our society, despite their limitations.
There is an outdoor area of over 1100 m2 surrounding the building, which consists of a front garden and enclosed backyard.

Process

A list of wishes and preconditions has been drawn up together with the parents. A garden group was set up to provide feedback on the garden design. The design was initially used to raise funds and sponsorship for implementation. This was successful, but the parents themselves also did a lot: put plants in the ground, built the benches and pergola.

Wishes and preconditions

Take a walk, do things together… Above all, it should be a playful, informal garden, with winding paths, wheelchair accessibility, a green fence, attention to biodiversity, a trampoline, colourful plants, low-stimulus and the lowest possible maintenance level. A garden to use.

The design

The front garden is planted with shade plants, solitary shrubs and flowering trees. A green welcome.
The backyard is the domain of the residents. A winding semi-paved path connects the terraces of the living rooms. On the route you will pass borders with groups of flowering plants, seating areas, a large terrace, a lawn, trampoline, a scented herb garden, fruit trees and vegetable garden tables. There are also playful elements, such as a ‘garden gate for J.’ (a resident in a wheelchair who loves opening and closing doors) and a pergola corridor. The steel fence surrounding the garden is covered with different types of climbing plants. Solitary shrubs stand loosely in the space in front of this fence.
The trees and shrubs give the garden structure, height and shade. Low-stem fruit trees have been planted that are easy for wheelchair users to reach. The borders consist of large planting areas, with ‘tough’ plants that are easy to maintain. Large areas with ground cover plants have been created throughout the garden. The garden is attractive for the residents as well as for birds and insects.

Low in stimulation

To avoid external stimuli, the fence is planted with climbing plants, some of which are evergreen. The shrubs on both sides of the fence are intended for privacy, but also to integrate the garden into the environment in a natural way. The plants in the garden are diverse in colour, but the large planting areas create a calm image. There are no objects that make noise, such as a fountain. Plants that ‘wave’ too much have also been avoided. Residents can solitarily retreat in the garden or meet others.

Together

It would be wonderful if the residents saw the garden as an extension of their studio, a free place where they could retreat, but also where they could meet and have a picnic together, gardening, picking apples or just hanging out.

The Borders

De Brug is a school for special, primary education, where lessons are given to small groups. Around the school is a green schoolyard with, amongst other things, a vegetable garden and five borders. Together with teacher Mayke de Groot, I have developed a participation project in which the children are involved in the redevelopment process from the start and in this way are introduced to gardening and everything that comes with it. Such as soil types, sun and shade plants, insects and biodiversity. A dozen pupils worked very hard and enthusiastically: removing old plants, applying compost, choosing plants, planting plants and watering. We also visited a nursery.
The project is a pilot in the context of outdoor lessons in the green. In connection with the privacy no photos have been posted in which the children are recognizable.

L’histoire perdue

Heerlijck Zicht is a walking route that takes visitors along artworks in the countryside around Diepenheim. The route is based on a walk that Mennonite minister and one of the earliest authors of books on nature walks, Jacobus Craandijk, made in 1874. He described the route in Wandelingen door Nederland met pen en potlood (Walks through the Netherlands with pen and pencil’).I designed a seasonal garden for the Old Public Cemetery in Diepenheim. This graveyard, which was closed in 1910, is the site of some 60 gravestones in a grassy plot surrounded by aged conifers and deciduous trees. There are some 400 graves under the earth here, their wooden grave markers having disappeared in the course of time. The awareness of a forgotten history was revived in the summer of 2017 by marking the old graves with sunflowers: “histoire perdue”. The layout was based on an old map from 1876, the year when the cemetery first came into use. A path of mown grass meandered through the graveyard (measuring ca 100 x 25 m), passing alongside both the graves and the sunflowers. The sunflowers rose above the unmown grass that grew ever higher in the course of the summer and that was home to an abundance of native flowers and plants.
The sunflower seeds – seven species of Helianthus – were sown at the start of May. In July and August the flowers were in full bloom and the graveyard was transformed into a beautiful flower garden. In September the cycle was complete and the seed pods were eaten by the birds.

Photos 3, 4: Erica Olthuis.

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Circular Garden

Circular Garden is a design for an urn garden made up of burial mounds in which ash remains are stored. The ash is placed in an urn or can be mixed with the earth that forms the mound. The design of the garden is based on a circle, a shape that has no beginning and no end. All the burial mounds in the Circular Garden are round. Besides smaller, individual burial mounds, there are a number of larger ‘family mounds’, where the ashes of several people can be placed.
The planting in the Circular Garden is based on the urn gardens and burial mounds found in prehistory, and features Calluna vulgaris (heather) and grasses. Trees will be planted around the garden. The model is to scale, based on an area of 25 x 25 metres.

Read more: www.asinbeeld.nl.

Wind Vane Park (Windwijzerpark)

Nesselande is a windy spot. Energy and movement are part of the wind, just as they are also part of growing children The focus of this artwork is the wind.
In front of the school there is wedge-shaped park, where the Wind Vane Park park is laid out. Between the tall grasses there are seven wind vanes, masts of around 5 metres tall. On top of the masts silhouettes of migratory birds are mounted on arrows that indicate the direction of the wind and catch and reflect the light, shining like tower cocks. These summer and winter guests that migrate between continents can also be found around Nesselande. Between the masts there are two intersecting paths that indicate the direction of the wind. The wind has different names in every part of the world. Some of these names, like monsoon or chocolatero, are etched on the tiles. The Wind Vane Park points to distant places, a symbol of the wind that blows in all parts of the globe.

Bijlmer Tree Garden (Bijlmer Bomentuin)

The Bijlmer Tree Garden is a design for an arboretum, made up of trees from the more than 140 different countries that the residents of Amsterdam Zuidoost also come from. Half of the trees are located in a conservatory. The layout of the Bijlmer Tree Garden (around 1 hectare in size) encompasses a path that connects all the trees with one another. The conservatory is the focal point of the Tree Garden with the trees, the residents’ stories, educational projects, and much more. The entrance building also has an international restaurant. Trees are often linked with folk tales and rituals, and with personal stories and memories. These stories are visualised in the conservatory and the garden and via a website. A special aspect of this art project is the collaboration with other disciplines and the way in which the residents can make a personal contribution to the project. A foretaste of this was apparent at the Trees and Stories exhibition in March 2006 in the Centre for Visual Arts (CBK) Zuidoost.
In 2005 the Zuidoost district expressed the intention of constructing the Bijlmer Tree Garden in the Bijlmer Park that was due for renewal (in line with a design by Mecanoo architects). This led to the setting up of the Bijlmer Tree Garden Foundation that produced a business plan for the project. However, in 2010 the Zuidoost district decided that the Bijlmer Tree Garden would not be realised.

Square garden

The buildings of the Zuidoost district office and the Anton de Kom complex together surround a semi-public courtyard. Around half of the garden is a car park for the residents. The terrace is on the second floor of the district office.

Garden

The basic principle of the design encompasses the themes of meeting and cultural diversity to reflect the fact that the Zuidoost city district is home to residents from a wide range of nationalities. The courtyard will be constructed on Dutch polder land. The design is based on a square grid. The square is a rational element in the landscape, an earthly symbol, very traditionally Dutch, but also a significant motif worldwide. The square is integrated into the design from general principles to minor details. A highly visual floor, a kind of walkway/circuit connects the garden and the car park. A specially designed tile with a pattern of lines in the square is laid in a traditional diagonal black and white pattern. Both courtyards are bordered by espaliered trees. In the garden the square motif is laid out in a traditional diagonal black and white pattern. At the centre is a square area with a large white prunus tree, with seats arranged around it. The garden is planted with evergreen ornamental grass, where many different kinds of bulbs blossom in summer and winter. In the grass areas there are square flat plinths on which the Centre for Visual Arts exhibits different sculptures every few months.
In 2018, Ymere had a number of conversations with residents, which showed that people wanted more flowers, to grow their own herbs and to make better use of the garden as a place to stay. Commissioned by Ymere, I created a new planting plan and a number of proposals for the design. The plants in the garden have been renewed, the tiles cleaned, vegetable garden boxes have been installed, a large picnic table and a cupboard with garden tools.

Terrace

The roof terrace, onto which the offices of the Management Board face, is an extended area that is primarily used for receptions. The black and white tiled floor is the key feature of the location, duplicating a section from the garden below. Olive trees shield the offices of the Management Board. Along the fence there is a long line of plant containers containing brightly coloured pink petunias, visible from the garden.

ontwerp aangepast 2015

Wiebeltuinen anno vroeger

Wavering gardens (De Wiebeltuinen)

The gardens are in a new residential area, surrounded by buildings and back gardens, separated by a road. The gardens are each around 40 x 60 metres in size. They are designed as identical twins with differences in details, and are intended as playgrounds and areas for walking and spending time.
Each garden has a layout of diagonal paths planted with a grid of fruit trees with more traditional genuses of apples and pears: the traditionally Dutch ‘Notaris’ apple and Doyenne de Comice pears. A relief has been created in the ground, forming ‘hills and dales’. The paths and trees move with the different levels of the garden, giving the impression that the garden is wavering. There is a playground for children, and two special places for the neighbourhood: people can cycle there, skate and picnic. In the spring this haven is a beautiful garden full of different blossoms, and in the autumn there is the harvest!

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Princess garden (Prinsessetuin)

Design sketch

Two new blocks flank a triangular public park with a number of old monumental trees. On the third side there is a street with houses dating from the sixties. The new homes border the park. A line of sight runs from one street to the other along the long building block. The aim for this project was to mark this line of sight. An important point to bear in mind was that the park is not for walking in; it is a garden for viewing. The line of sight is at the same time also the ideal route to cut off the route through the park. There is a high chance that this will become an informal path. The proposal was to lay a lot of lines of sight (or paths) alternately of grass and gravel next to one another. The pattern reflects a baroque garden, where both lines of sight and the use of grass and gravel are part of the structural elements. There is a striped Princess garden, a viewing garden that is at the same time attractive to walk through…

Maria garden (Mariatuin)

Oldershove is a residential complex comprising a care home and independent homes for the elderly. It is a new, large building in the centre of the village of Wehl.
At the front of the building is a small Maria chapel. The chapel is important for the residents of the village. In fact, it was in the way when plans for the reconstruction of Oldershove were made, but the decision was taken that it should not be removed and it now marks the entrance.
The chapel has acquired its own special place. A path of blue granite leads to the chapel and runs further to the Maria garden at the rear. Only white flowers blossom in the garden, including a cherry tree that produces white flowers in winter. From the garden, sitting on a long bench, you look towards the wall of the chapel on which a famous haiku by Moritake about a butterfly is painted.

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Palms in the polder (Palmen in de polder)

A residual space will be created in the middle of the polder where the High-Speed Line (HSL) will branch off from the Schiphol Line. The provincial road, the N207, closes the triangular space. A visual intervention was requested for the residual space that does justice to the landscape and can serve as a landmark.

A new landscape would be created in the polder with palms in line with a strong grid. An oasis? A plantation? It may seem impossible – palms in the polder – but nonetheless it was achieved. You could compare it to the whole landscape of the Haarlemmermeer, constructed by human hands and machines. The Trachycarpus fortunei, or Chinese Windmill Palm, can withstand the Dutch winter. Planted in rows, the palms seem to have found their place effortlessly in the polder. By day they wave to the travellers, and by night they stand, beautifully illuminated in the dark.

Hortus in de Bijlmer

2001: A public space odyssey is an exhibition that was shown at mupis throughout Amsterdam. Artists have been asked to visualize an idea for art in the city’s public space. Hortus in the Bijlmer is a proposal for an international plant garden in the Bijlmermeer, Amsterdam-Southeast. All plants and trees come from the countries of origin of residents. In 2001 there were 127 nationalities.
Hortus in the Bijlmer was later developed into the Bijlmer Tree Garden.

Read more: Bijlmer Bomentuin.

Buitengewoon

Order reigns in the ‘Zonneveld’ allotment garden: gardens flanked by sleek hedges, plants standing in rows. Sometimes you see a garden with wild flowers, but that was an exception in 1994. In addition to plants, there are small buildings, such as homemade sheds, greenhouses and other -sometimes wonderful- constructions.
Hetty and Gerard made a part of their garden available for the art project. They don’t have a greenhouse, but this season they do.
The design is inspired by the diversity of buildings. A small wooden greenhouse has been placed upside down with its roof in the earth. There is a table in the greenhouse with children’s tableware. On top grow almost black violets, Viola cornuta ‘Molly Sanderson’, a striking violet, due to its deep purple colour that looks black. Through the glass roof you can see the bottom: black earth. Some gardeners at the complex perceived this construction as a new greenhouse model. The black violins did very well.

Foto’s: Marc de Haan/John Kroes