KEY FACTS

Status: Occupation of a garden No financing Creation Date: 2010 Links: http://tlandhuis.wordpress.com/

How did you start the project ?

We started with a group of six people, looking for a garden because we live in the city and wanted to do some gardening and cultivate plants. An farm that had been abandoned caught our interest. It had formerly been a biological farm and there was still a lot of material left there, like tools and seeds. The people who had been there before had been renting the place, using it as a sort of social farm that worked with socially excluded people. For whatever reason however, they moved elsewhere and left a lot of things behind them. Because it was abandoned we decided to squat the place and collected all the seeds that had been left. In May 2010 we started to build things, such as an outdoor kitchen now referred to as the "people’s kitchen" and a system to collect rain water.

What is your project about ?

At the beginning we started our endeavour with a collective garden, after which we proposed to neighbours and people from the city to come and start taking care of some smaller individual gardens. Because there is a lot of land and a very long waiting list to access the city gardens, we decided to organise an open garden day to which some people started to come on a regular basis. Here we share the material and the compost with the people who are coming. There is no cost but they can give some kind of donation to buy material or whatever is needed in the moment.

We also have social meals. Every Sunday, except in the winter time, there is food available in what we called the people’s kitchen. We prepare the meals using vegetables from the garden, with things we get from a local food collective or sometimes with food from dumpster diving. The meals provided are mostly vegan.

Another activity we do is making juice together since there are apple trees along with other fruit trees. We have made more than 500 litres of juice and in the people’s kitchen it is free of charge to people that come there or to those working in the garden. There is an open donation for it.

In general, we function in a horizontal way as in we meet on a regular basis to discuss and take decisions together. We try to work with as little money as possible, using it only for materials, to pay electricity bills. We also receive some free donations of different items which is always welcome. For the rest, we always try to find things ourselves, by going to containers or asking people. There’s so much you can do with items that would otherwise have been thrown away. In this regard I want to mention that there is also a small freeshop – a place where people can leave clothes they don’t use or need anymore and where others can find ‘new’ bits.

And what about the house ?

We try to find people that are interested in gardening and want to sleep in the house. At the beginning we hosted people that did not have a home. Since the first to arrive were not so interested in gardening, we asked them whether it would be okay for them to find other places to stay in order that people more interested in gardening or more interested in the collective life could come and take there place. And this is exactly what happened. Actually, the goings on at the house is separate from the garden in some respects. Its residents have separate meetings with specific rules for the house while there are also meetings and specific rules for the garden.

What problems do you face in the day-to-day ?

We have those general issues associated with living together, like sharing a kitchen, washing the dishes or sharing garden materials, and so on. These types of problems are addressed by talking together and setting some rules. Good communication is very important if you decide to organise something like this with no budget, especially when you invite people who are not familiar with people’s kitchens and the "do-it-yourself" mentality that goes with it. Another issue is to make sure that when things get broken or a mess is created, it is not always the same people having to fix things or clean up after others.

And concerning the fact that you are occupying the place…

At the beginning, we only stayed there for a few nights since we did not know how the owner was going to react. In the end however, he reacted in a very positive way and has come to see what we doing with the space. Actually, he knew that the city was going to buy his land; the city had planned to build some football pitches there. After some time, we sat together with the land owner and representatives of the city, which eventually bought the land but were not interested in what was going on with the garden. It is strange (and disconcerting) because everything depends upon one person who is not interested in what we propose and does not recognise the social work we do – he simply refuses to talk with property ‘thieves’. We still have problems with the city and are in constant risk of being evicted. Nevertheless, as more people come to know about the project we receive more support.

Who else is coming to your garden ?

Actually, there is a growing network of people who are discovering the project. We organise “skill shares”, where people come together to show what they can do and share their knowledge and skills. For example, how to make certain materials, like rocket stoves, or how to make cheese. Workshops are always linked to ecological issues. We also want to teach others about what we have done in the garden. For example, we built a dry toilet in one workshop. It is also something that is free to take part in and there has been a lot of interested people.

Some events have also taken place here. Most of the people that have come to take part are connected with ecological movements, but some are also linked to social and solidarity issues. There has taken place some small festivals, such as a project for Bolivia and another one for Mexico. We did not organise these events, we just hosted them. The idea is not to have the space for parties but more for these kind of "value-added" projects. It’s important for us to give off a positive image so that people don’t get scared and also so that it remains an open space which shows that another way of living is possible.