At the Shadow Garden, we have begun a search in recent months for the future of gardening in a changing climate that is getting drier and hotter. In the near future, we will increasingly experience relatively wet winters and dry hot summers due to the Mediterraneanization of our cities. What does a xerophilic (heat-loving) biotope for the city look like? How do we develop a regenerative system for a thriving heat-resistant urban nature? Currently, our climate zone is shifting 13 meters northeastward every day. What will our urban biotope look like in the future when we live in the current Paris climate zone 50 years from now?
The urban area is dominated by asphalt, pavement and concrete, on a foundation of raised sand. The city is a large, walled heat island. What heat-loving plant communities do we embrace in the future? And how do we as humans learn to work with them to keep the city livable?
Shadow Garden
In the coming years, in collaboration with Zone2Source, we will develop the former cloister garden of the Belgian pavilion into the SchaduwTuin (Shadow Garden), an artist’s garden in which stories are housed that make entanglements of nature and man visible and tangible.
Shadow is where the light does not shine on it. What processes take place while we cannot see them? In the Shadow Garden, we as humans literally move into the shadows of plants, organisms, soil and earth systems. We delve into twilight, shadow, fog and the grey area of hidden knowledge that we bring to light. How can a garden be a place where people can reshape their connection to their environment?
With the Shadow Garden, de Onkruidenier is developing a test environment for a new relationship between humans and their future habitat. De Onkruidenier reverses the perspective: we leave behind traditional expectations of gardens and gardening. What attitude do we adopt as we learn to listen to plants and all the more-than-human organisms? What stories do they tell, what instructions do they give, what can we all learn? Through rituals, we develop a new language to take you into an in-between space where current issues of drought and heat and the shifting climate zone find a new order. Reflect with us on our relationship with (urban) nature. Every Wednesday morning the collective is present in the garden, when the weather allows us to. Here we weekly explore the relationships we maintain with this place. Through reflections, conversations, observations and our hands, we open our senses to the garden in new ways. Want to stop by or participate? If so, send us a message and we’d love to welcome you to meet the Shadow Garden.
Under the Free Space scheme of the City of Amsterdam, the walled Belgian Monastery Garden has been made available for the development of the Shadow Garden.
