THE OPEN GARDEN & MORE-THAN-HUMAN ENCOUNTERS
Situated around a 30-minute walk from the train station Halfweg-Zwanenburg, the organic farm Fruittuin van West emerges. Slightly hidden by a small forest, it appears with its tent-like grocery shopping area. What daily functions as a store for the local community to buy their (organic) fruits, vegetables, dairy, and other food products, on a day of the Reclaim the Seeds festival buzzes with chatter, the laughter of children, and the sounds of guitar in the background.
Reclaim the Seeds platform (see website) works towards establishing possibilities and spaces for sharing knowledge about sustainable agricultural practices and attracts those interested in exchanging seeds to ensure the betterment and strengthening of biodiversity. During the annual festival (taking place in several cities in the Netherlands), the platform brings together farmers, gardeners, researchers, activists, and community members (and families with their children and dogs) to rethink the importance of seed and food sovereignty. Through the annual festival, Reclaim the Seeds aims to stimulate discussions and practical engagements through workshops that are concerned with the need for greater agricultural biodiversity and food that is rooted in local communities.
Thanks to Reclaim the Seeds, Fruittuin van West became an assemblage of practices, voices, experiences and stories, all audible simultaneously and mutually enforcing one another. More than 20 stalls filled the so-called Druivenkas (see here) with local producers sharing their knowledge on edible (and usually forgotten) plants and flowers, pickling, seed and plant drying and preservation, ways of resisting the normalised practice of monoculture, and others.
Workshops, very much focused on the hands-on experiences, were taking place throughout the weekend. The topics spanned seed sovereignty, fermentation, basket weaving, self-growing of mushrooms, the notion of power in agriculture, foraging, and others. It was the ‘Gardens of Resistance’ lecture given by the Four Siblings Collective that Justyna Jakubiec (UU) and Pia Canales (NI) participated in. The talk was a reflection on the collective’s research into the so-called stories of resistance closely and integrally connected to (edible) plants. The lecture’s participants were guided through the significance of corn in the Mexican context – as a plant that represents the Indigenous peoples, signifies communal growing, and symbolises dignity. The red carnation was introduced as a powerful symbol of protesting in Istanbul, Turkey, established by the group known as Saturday Mothers, who strived to give voice to the disappearance of around 700 men in the 1990s, the circumstances of which have not been clarified. The flower has become a symbol of protest against the local government’s neglect. The story continued with (among others) a figure of the sunflower, crucial for the Ukrainian context, forget-me-nots as Armenian symbols of resistance against the Turkish government, and white carnations used as a symbol of resistance by the Dutch resistance during World War II.
The lecture given by the Four Siblings Collective pointed to the question of how plants can embody protest, opposition, endurance and political struggle. In short, how they become (and can become) agents of resistance and transformation. As, through the Open Garden, we are exploring the question of openness, one that concerns not only humans but more than humans in particular, this lecture has sparked some crucial notions: what would it mean to show resistance through food cultivation? Are there seeds that we should remind ourselves of? What do we want to resist? How can a garden, the ecology that it is, turn us into agents of transformation?