donny9

#9

ISSUE #9 – 2012 STRICTLY UNEDITED JOURNAL ON THE PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF NATURE IN THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT

CLUB DONNY

THE WIND’S VISIT YEB WIERSMA

Nimble marram grass, windswept glasswort, fearless willow-herb, valiant poppy; did you know that you belong to the adventurous category of pioneering plants? That your globetrotting germinative power has the ability to conquer new lands?

could play, lose my way and grow unhindered.

Le Roy awakened me with the capriciously coloured folklore of the seasons, with the alluring complexity of natural processes. And he took pity on the repressed minorities, such as ‘weeds’ and ‘insects’: ‘What would the world be, once bereft, of wet and wildness? Let them be left. O let them You, dandelion, broad-leaved dock, creeping be left; wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and thistle, shepherd’s purse, silverweed; shake off the wilderness yet’. 1 your fleece, release your plumes of seed. Nestle your tap roots deep in underground clay. You, The night dehydrates. As morning is ushered in catchweed, hound’s tongue and burdock; sharpen an early bumblebee gyrates around my hips. your tiny barbs. Adhere to skin and hair. Arm I stir myself. Wander towards the baby room.

Conscientiously I check the barrel-chested yourselves. Against modish trendsetters. incubators. For viability. I lift them up and give Be stubborn hogweed. Irritate the skin. Of those the little cuttings and shoots some fresh air. As who leer at you constantly. They’re waiting for I replace the bell jars I think of Sylvia Plath. you. With their gleaming secateurs. Meanwhile I Of our very first acquaintance: It was a queer, implore you. Stay away from here. Go forth on sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted The shifts in atmospheric pressure and multiply the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing verge and forest fringe with your waving umbels. in New York. 2 You, snowflake, dead nettle, ground ivy, milkweed and autumn crocus; bow your sweet stems.

To the diligent earth workers. Entice them with your calorie-rich elaiosome. You, squirting cucumber; find a fast-flowing river and prepare your ammunition. Open your fleshy bombs at the right moment.

Pappus accelerates at the request of Mr Beaufort.

Evening news: ‘Wild gardener Louis Le Roy has died.’ In the nineteen seventies he designed a number of ‘experimental nature gardens’ for the new housing estate Lewenborg, where I grew up.

As a child I felt at home amid his rampant-growing structures and body of thought. Just like the 1001 and rising species of plants and insects. Here I

I continue my patrol. Proceed towards the flower garden. It’s rush-hour in the pregnant airspace.

Surging, bolted hollyhocks serve as landingstrips. Good morning map butterfly, good morning bluebottle, good morning ichneumon fly, good morning wild bee, good morning spider wasp.

I see you’re all hard at work. Did you read that there’s a job vacancy? As ‘overnight’ courier?

The firm of ‘Seed Distribution’ seeks experienced carriers.

You, Lady Darlene, Chat Noir, Julie Jescot, Mango Madness, Burning Love. Do you no longer answer to your stage name? Now the season is drawing to a close? You look exhausted. The weight of the consummate summer is showing on you. Am I the only one who sees how your fur pales, how

your shoulders hang down? How louse, larva and caterpillar climb your moaning body? Suck you dry? Till the last drop of oxblood red disappears into their pantries?

A cool current of air approaches.

I look up. Restless swan’s necks write the letter V. Swallows dive. Sharp and deep. In the shafts of light of the hay barn. I keep a close eye on them. They’re warming up. For operation ‘Desert Storm’. Do you remember last autumn?

How several of your brothers, siblings perished during the exodus? Sandblasted in the Sahara?

Be careful. Make sure your pilot’s licence and immigration papers are in order. Practice your evasive manoeuvres, your tumbling and your wing beats per minute.

We shall know your velocity. 3 You, satiated bird of passage; leave me for another, for an unknown equator. Treat me to one final swoop. Show me one more time how lithely you play the wind, make it whisper; To continents of summer, To firmaments of sun, To strange, bright crowds of flowers, And birds of foreign tongue! 4

1. Line of the poem Inversnaid by Gerald Manley Hopkins, 1918.

2. Opening line of Sylvia Plath’s novel The bell jar, 1963.

3. Reversed title borrowed from Dave Egger’s novel You Shall Know Our Velocity, 2002.

4. Stanza from the poem Transplanted by Emily Dickinson, 1830-1863.

CLUB DONNY #9 2012 > 03

THE URBAN HARVESTERS DAVID LEDA

I have lived in Buenos Aires all my life and have witnessed many of its mutations, most of which have been negative. The replacement of beautiful old houses by cheap apartment buildings has been going on for decades, but in recent years, since Argentina recovered from the crisis of 2001, this process has accelerated. And so has the proliferation of visual advertising in public space, as Argentineans rediscovered the appeal of lowbudget consumerism.

One of the few positive things that remained almost unchanged is the abundance of trees on almost every sidewalk. In the late nineteenth century the government had ambitious plans for the city, which included the creation of new parks and the planting of trees on sidewalks. To do this, they appointed French architect and naturalist Charles Thays, who traveled the entire country collecting all kinds of species of trees for the parks and streets of the city. He is the one responsible for the astonishing variety of flora found in Buenos Aires.

I have never been much of an environmentalist, but as the general appearance of the city grew increasingly polluted I started noticing the beauty of its trees, which became more visible to my perception in contrast to the surrounding ugliness.

Something that would have never attracted my attention in the countryside, like the complex interweaving shapes on the trunk of a tipuana tree, seemed like an epiphany of beauty in the midst of urban harshness.

As I became more interested in trees, I started learning more about them. This was helped by a website created by the city council that tells you what species of tree can be found in each street by entering the street name and number of its location. Over time, I was able to identify many varieties of trees by looking at their leaves, flowers or trunk. The ability to do this gradually changed my perception of the city landscape. As 04 < CLUB DONNY #9 2012

my attention became more focused on the trees I stopped paying so much attention to the crassness of the architecture and advertising, and life in the city became less tiresome.

There is one empty lot in particular that I like, which looks like a tiny forest. Of the large house that once stood there, only an inner wall remains. By looking at this wall you can figure out the placement of the different rooms: the glazed tiles signal the bathroom, the plaster moldings and scraps of wallpaper were probably the adornments of a spacious dining room. This dining room is now full of large plants, like wild arugula and dandelion, larger than I have ever seen in a vegetable market. But much as I respect Adrián’s views on urban harvesting, and much as I like arugula salad, I just couldn’t harvest from this particular place. As crazy as it may sound, I had the superstitious feeling that I was breaking into the intimacy of the former residents, that the plants somehow belonged to them. Or, even crazier, that the plants were, in some inexplicable way, a reincarnation of them, returning to the old house that was violently expropriated from them.

It was only recently I realized that learning about urban trees, which I embraced as some sort of aesthetic survivalism, could also be a form of survivalism in a more literal sense. I learned this through Adrián Buenaventura, an economist and ecologist who studied the trees of Buenos Aires not just for their beauty, but also for their nutritional value. He has made a map of the city with the exact location of many trees and plants that have edible fruits or leaves, including the time of the year when it is best to harvest them. He has charted most streets and parks, as well as some empty lots where he found many edible plants and fungi that grow spontaneously. His map has only been distributed among a small group of friends for obvious reasons: the availability of free edible fruits and vegetables is very limited. It could never work on a large scale. Also, the fact that the trees Although I never confessed this superstition to are state property makes the practice somewhat Adrián, I did express some concerns regarding the controversial. level of pollution in the soil where these plants and trees grow and how this pollution might affect the One of Adrián’s favorite spots for food gathering fruits and leaves that he harvests. His theory is that is the area known as Ex-AU 3, a series of empty our bodies have already adapted to this pollution, lots in the Villa Urquiza neighbourhood, just two and it can do us no more harm than the pollution blocks away from my apartment. In the 1970s the in the air that we breathe every day as city military government expropriated and demolished dwellers, and probably much less harm than all a great many houses along a corridor of several the chemicals used in industrial food production. blocks between two straight streets in order to Adrián claims that by eating from urban trees and make space for a new highway. But the project was plants one can have a much healthier diet than by cancelled before the construction of the highway buying at the supermarket and, obviously, a much had even started. This was not because of public cheaper one. He says that this is the most natural protests -in those times, to participate in such way to obtain your food, considering that our actions was very dangerous- but due to financial hunter-gatherer ancestors have done it this way problems. The government did not have any for millennia. plans for all the empty lots and half-demolished houses that were left behind and they remained As I listened to him a strange image came to my abandoned for decades. Over time the area started mind: a tribe of hunter-gatherers roaming the to look like post-war Berlin, as vegetation and streets among cheap modernist buildings and cell graffiti gradually covered the ruins. phone ads.

R16

FRANK BRUGGEMAN A question that I’m often asked is why my work has such an ‘orderly’ appearance. Usually, my rather flippant answer is that my ‘compulsion for order’ might well be the unintended result of the fact that I grew up in a perfect square. And then I explain that I was born and bred on an arable farm in the Noordoostpolder (N.O.P.). My father’s plot had the number R16. That number alone indicates the schematic precision with which the N.O.P. was laid out in the nineteen fourties. Precisely one hectare of my father’s 24 hectare plot was reserved for the farmyard. That farmyard, a hundred by a hundred metres, is the square in which I strolled around for eighteen years. It was bordered by a windbreak consisting of maple trees, hazels, common ash, elders and hawthorns.

One of my earliest memories of the farmyard on R16 is of me hiding under the rhubarb in the vegetable garden when fighter jets flew over. I was terrified by the roar of the planes, particularly if one of them flew through the sound barrier, which caused a thunderous boom. When I was about eight, I received my first little garden of my own: a rectangular piece of land, two metres long by half a metre wide, which lay parallel to my father’s vibrated concrete shed. Nothing had previously been cultivated on that strip of land and my mother felt it was a good idea to change that for once. Between our house and the public highway was the so-called front garden, consisting of a huge lawn and a wide border with perennial plants. I walked through the border with my father and pointed out the plants I wanted for my garden.

He then dug up a piece from a large clump for my garden. It was a colourful mix. One of my favourites was the sedum sempervivum, because of its exotic appearance. I combined these plants with boulders that I’d found into a kind of rock garden.

To introduce more variety into my garden, plants were also swapped with neighbours and my mother’s friends who were keen on gardening. An interest in gardening was more or less obligatory in the N.O.P., as the decision that each farmyard would have a spacious garden was already made on the drawing board. An annual garden competition encouraged people not to neglect their gardens. Our garden regularly won prizes, which was partly thanks to the previous residents.

That is, they’d planted several eye-catching trees in the garden, including a majestic weeping willow. Although this willow was occasionally in danger of blowing over and shed a lot of twigs that blocked the gutters of the house, it was never

felled or trimmed. Nor were the three birch trees agriculture also began experimenting with new in the middle of the lawn: they were seen as the forms of operational management, crop protection garden’s sentinels and were, thus, left undisturbed. and weed eradication. On the plot adjacent to my father’s, a young farmer introduced biodynamic As a young gardener I soon developed an eye for crop cultivation. All the other local farmers, my the variation in the layout and planting among the father included, thought he was a fool. When other farm gardens in the N.O.P. A few years later, I was about eighteen, I practically maintained when I had to cycle every day for two hours to the entire garden and I applied the more natural my secondary school in Emmeloord, I diligently approach I’d used in the former chicken field also kept up with the changes in the gardens I passed to the rest of the garden. The border in front of the en route. I still remember vividly the emergence house remained intact, but instead of consisting of railway sleepers and how various gardens in of neatly separated clumps, I allowed the plants the surrounding area underwent a transformation to fan out and different species to overlap one after their introduction. I wanted sleepers too and another. The forsythia and all the other spindly came up with a design. My parents, pretended park shrubbery were dug up, while conversely the not to hear my harping on about sleepers. I had liverwort with its purple umbels and the plume to make do with a visit to the gardens of Mien poppy with its golden yellow spikes were given Ruys – great advocate of the railway sleeper. My ample space. Only the vegetable garden remained parents, however, did give me the opportunity to self-evidently my father’s domain. That garden construct a sunken sitting area with a bunch of old didn’t interest me anyway, probably because there fruit tree stakes. was simply nothing to improve there.

I was about sixteen when my mother and I decided that a part of the farmyard where, until then, the When I left the polder, now seventeen years chickens had scratched about could be put to better ago, I took around seventy different plants with use. One half of the chicken field was reserved as me. Currently I’m on my fourth garden and of a grass plot, at the request of my football-playing everything I dragged along with me from the brothers. The other half, a piece measuring ten by N.O.P., in total, three plants remain: a two-tone thirty metres, was incorporated into the garden. blue iris, a short purple variety of geranium and a The design and layout of the new garden was rhubarb plant from my father’s vegetable garden. left entirely up to me. I decided to break with When I moved from Arnhem to Rotterdam I the rectilinear character of the rest of the garden. planted most of my collection of flora in black My mother and I had visited Louis le Roy’s cement tubs. The new destination was, namely, experimental gardens in Heerenveen, a piece a former car park. The burning sun on this car of nature one kilometre long by thirteen metres park, and prior to that the barren Arnhem sand, wide in the middle of a housing estate, where has drastically thinned out my plant possessions. all kinds of plants grew that were not tolerated The remaining tubs with garden plants now in respectable municipal gardens in those days. I stand on the inner grounds of the former school was inspired by Le Roy’s ‘wild’ approach. After that accommodates my current home and studio. that visit, my understanding of what constitutes a Whereas in the perfect square and fertile soil of garden and how a garden should be laid out were R16, I was still trying to impose my will on the forever changed. Shortly after that, I remember garden, I’ve now arrived at the understanding that digging up a large butterbur somewhere by the every garden is based on a structure that you only side of a road. I also introduced other ‘weeds’ into have very little power to influence. the garden. Of course I wasn’t spared the classic beginner’s errors. For one whole summer I walked Over the years I’ve gone from being a gardener around with big blisters on my arms from the sap with a strong organizational tendency to a more of a giant hogweed. Then, for years after, I had laissez-faire gardener, who allows nature to do its to dig up that hogweed’s seedlings to curb its thing and just helps steer it a little. And as for my compulsion to reproduce. My father allowed me compulsion for order; that has found expression to do anything I wanted in this. The only condition for a number of years already in the compilation was that the weeds remained within my appointed of a botanical archive of the plants that cross my domain. As soon as they popped up outside path. Nostalgia for the N.O.P.? Oh absolutely! of that, his weedkiller spray came into action. In my dreams I’m often still there. The perfect Incidentally, while I was hard at work putting the square of R16 is ingrained in me, but as a gardener new gardening into practice, others in large-scale I know that there is no such thing as perfection.

CLUB DONNY #9 2012 > 05

STINGING NETTLE

STINGING NETTLE, URTICA DIOICA STINGING NETTLE OR COMMON NETTLE IS A HERBACEOUS PERENNIAL FLOWERING PLANT, GROWING TO 0.6 TO 2 M TALL IN THE SUMMER AND DYING DOWN TO THE GROUND IN THE WINTER. IT IS NATIVE TO EUROPE, ASIA, NORTHERN AFRICA AND NORTH AMERICA. IT IS THE BESTKNOWN MEMBER OF THE NETTLE GENUS URTICA. THE PLANT HAS MANY HOLLOW STINGING HAIRS CALLED TRICHOMES ON ITS LEAVES AND STEMS, WHICH ACT LIKE HYPODERMIC NEEDLES, INJECTING HISTAMINE, SEROTONINE AND OTHER CHEMICALS THAT PRODUCE A STINGING SENSATION WHEN CONTACTED, FROM WHICH THE SPECIES DERIVES ITS COMMON NAME, AS WELL AS THE COLLOQUIAL NAMES BURN NETTLE, BURN WEED, BURN HAZEL.

URTICA DIOICA

STINGING HAIRS

sustainable and ecologically sound fabrics has led to a recent surge in interest in the possibilities of nettle for the textiles. On some acres of agrarian land in Kraggenburg in the Noordoostpolder that were previously used for more traditional crops, there is now even a special theme park (www.netl.nl) dedicated to the stinging nettles.

As well as the potential for encouraging beneficial insects, nettles have a number of other uses in the vegetable garden. The growth of stinging nettle is an indicator that < COURAGEOUS WALK IN A NETTLE FIELD DOMESTIC USE Despite their annoying characteristics nettles have a long association with mankind. In ancient times it was an important fiber plant that was used to manufacture textiles and rope. Nettle was also used for the manufacturing of paper and the dyeing of sheep wool. Easier to handle and cheaper cotton and synthetic fibers and pigments have supplanted the nettle, so that these applications now are almost forgotten. Yet, the cultivation of nettles requires far less water and far less pesticides than the cultivation of cotton. The demand for more 06 < CLUB DONNY #9 2012

> AESOPS FABLES: ‘NEXT TIME YOU TOUCH A NETTLE GRASP IT BOLDLY AND IT WILL BE AS SILK TO YOUR HANDS AND NOT STING YOU AT ALL’ >> MANY OF OUR MOST COLOURFUL AND WELL KNOWN BUTTERFLIES DEPEND ON NETTLES FOR THE GROWTH OF THEIR LARVAE

an area has high fertility (especially phosphorus). Nettles contain a lot of nitrogen and can be used as a compost activator or to make a liquid fertilizer useful in supplying magnesium, sulphur and iron to the soil.

of speech in the English language.

Shakespeare’s Hotspur urges that ‘out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety’ (Henry IV, part 1, Act II Scene 3). The figure of speech ‘to grasp the nettle’ probably originated from Aesop’s fable* The Boy and the Nettle. In Sean FIGURES OF SPEECH O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock In Great Britain the stinging nettle is one of the characters quotes Aesop the only common stinging plant and ‘Gently touch a nettle and it’ll sting has found a place in several figures you for your pains. Grasp it as a lad

STINGING NETTLE

of mettle and soft as silk remains’.

The metaphor may refer to the fact that if a nettle plant is grasped firmly rather than brushed against, it does not sting so readily, because the hairs are crushed down flat and do not penetrate the skin so easily.

WORLD NETTLE EATING CHAMPIONSHIPS AT MARSHWOOD IN DORSET Welcome to the World Nettle Eating Championships – one hour of eating as many stinging nettles as your stomach can bare.

As the competition’s fame has spread, nettle eaters from as far as New York, Australia, Northern Ireland and Belgium make the trip to West Dorset. As the huge bunches of stinging nettles arrive, the competitors face one hour of munching their way through the leaves, and the winner is whoever finishes with the most two foot stalks, stripped of their leaves!

*Aesop’s Fables or the Aesopica is a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and storyteller believes to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BC.

FOOD FOR CATERPILLARS Urtica nettles are food for the caterpillars of numerous Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths), such as the tortrix moth Syricoris lacunana and several Nymphalidae, such as Vanessa atalanta, one of the Red Admiral butterflies. <

HERBAL LEGACY: URTIFICATION Nettle leaf is a very valuable herbal remedy. The content of iron makes it a wonderful blood builder, and the presence of vitamin C aids in the iron absorption. Stinging nettle is beneficial during pregnancy due to its rich mineral value and vitamin K, which guards against excessive bleeding. Urtification, the process of deliberately applying stinging nettles to the skin in order to provoke inflammation is done as a folk remedy for rheumatism and arthritis,

CLUB DONNYS HOME MADE NETTLE PESTO providing temporary relief from pain.

The leaves of the fresh nettle plant are stimulating and useful against bladder infections, gout, hayfever, asthma and also helps breaking down stones in the kidneys and gravel in the bladder. As a styptic, stinging nettle is an effective remedy for nose bleeds. The astringency of stinging nettle proves its usefulness in

NETTLE PESTO BLANCH THE NETTLES BEFORE MAKING THIS PESTO. FISH THEM OUT WITH A SKIMMER AND IMMEDIATELY DUMP THEM INTO A BIG BOWL WITH ICED WATER. ONCE THEY ARE COOL, PUT THEM IN A COLANDER TO STRAIN. 200 GR. FRESH YOUNG NETTLES MAKES A LITTLE MORE THAN 1/2 CUP OF PESTO.

hemorrhoids, diarrhea, and bleeding in the urinary organs. It also treats mouth and throat infections. Nettle is used in shampoo to control dandruff and is said to make hair more glossy, which is why some farmers include a handful of nettles with cattle feed. Mouthwashes and toothpastes containing nettle can reduce plaque INGREDIENTS: and gingivitis.

3 GARLIC CLOVES 2 TABLESPOONS TOASTED FOOD PINE NUTS The young leaves of the stinging 2 TABLESPOONS GRATED nettle are edible. It has a flavour PECORINO CHEESE similar to spinach when cooked. 6-8 TABLESPOONS BLANCHED, Young plants were harvested by CHOPPED NETTLES Native Americans and used as a SALT cooked plant in spring when other OLIVE OIL food plants were scarce. Soaking nettles in water or cooking will 1. Pesto is best made with a mortar remove the stinging chemicals from and pestle.You can make this in a the plant. The leaves and the nettles food processor, but it will not be the flowers can also be dried and may same. First add the pine nuts and then be used to make a tisane. crush lightly.

Nettles can be used in a variety of 2. Roughly chop the garlic and add it recipes, such as polenta, pesto and to the mortar, then pound a little. purée. Nettle soup is a common use 3. Add the salt, cheese and the nettles of the plant, particularly in Northern and commence pounding. Mash and Eastern Europe, Nepal and the everything together, stirring with the Northern regions of India. Nettles are pestle and mashing well so it is all sometimes used in cheese making, fairly uniform. for example in the production of 4. Start adding olive oil. How much?

Yarg and as a flavouring in varieties Depends on how you are using your of Gouda. pesto. If you are making a spread, maybe 2 tablespoons. If a pasta < sauce, double that or more. Either YOU CAN DRY NETTLES way, you add 1 tablespoon at a time, FOR TEA OR TINCTURES pounding and stirring to incorporate

BY HANGING BUNCHES it. Serve as a spread on bread, as an OF IT UPSIDE DOWN IN additive to a minestrone, as a pasta A COOL, DRY PLACE sauce or as a dollop on fish or poultry.

Used sources for this STINGING NETTLE page; various links via google search

CLUB DONNY #9 2012 > 31

ABOVE LELYSTAD ELIAS TIELEMAN

Allow me to introduce you to the Flevopolder, land that lies nearly six metres below sea level and that was constructed by human hands. Everything that’s there was planned in advance. That makes this place unique in the world. What used to be sea became land. What used to be land became city. And where there was no city, there was arable land and nature arose. Unspoilt, with an abundance of protected plants, such as orchids and rare fungi. The polder is a haven of refuge for many animal species, due to the space and shelter that still exists here. So you can find all kinds of bats, grass snakes, the hen harrier, the sea-eagle, the cormorant and the natterjack toad.

Rare animals that came to the polder as pioneers.

As a nomad, the protected natterjack toad, which loves pools and loose sand, can seriously frustrate urban development; new cycle lanes are laid in an arc around such existing natural habitats. These are minor details of the large-scale developments taking place here. Entrepreneurs are encouraged to set up business in Lelystad or to undertake projects here in the future. The International Space Transport Association (ISTA) does that very literally; ISTA wants to create a link between Lelystad and space. Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Airlines has developed a spacecraft that will fly through the atmosphere to the other side of the world in just minutes. Lelystad Spaceport as the European hub for the rest of the world. Lelystad has high ambitions, but reality lies on the water.

Thus, a replica of the VOC ship De Batavia that was lost near Australia in 1629 is berthed on the quay of Lelystad harbour.

The Flevopolder and Lelystad were intended to make their name in the agricultural sector. Lelystad would become the midpoint of the Flevopolder and the Markerwaard. The latter was never reclaimed.

In the 1891 plan by minister, engineer and hydraulic engineer Cornelis Lely (1854-1929), the south-western section of the Zuiderzee would have been one big polder. But that was cancelled 32 < CLUB DONNY #9 2012

due to politics and the crisis in the nineteen forties.

These days, you can pick strawberries at the organic farm on the Bronsweg and the agricultural sector is scrutinized thoroughly at the University of Wageningen’s Bio Science Center on the Runderweg. The development of the proposed industrial zone between Almere and Lelystad, however, never got off the ground. The recession at that time and nature came to terms in the Oostvaardersplassen. The vegetation transformed the seabed into marshlands and now makes it possible for us to literally see and experience how the IJsselmeer would have appeared 2000 years ago. Herds of wild horses and deer continue grazing undisturbed as you take the train from Almere to Lelystad. You imagine yourself to be on the steppes in Africa. The emptiness, the carcasses of animals, the gnawed trees and the fact that you are not allowed to enter, all serve to reinforce the feeling of it being a reserve. The unmistakably Dutch skies constitute a bizarre change in style.

Before you reach Lelystad by train you pass one of the ruins of the Flevopolder. The Lelystad Zuid station which was never completed lies deserted in the fields. The concrete work of art with the same basis as the stations Almere Buiten and Almere Muziekwijk is overgrown with moss. The loitering teens that meet under the station provide a rewarding subject for the urban photographer: the forbidding atmosphere of this bleak spot in its green surroundings has an intangible urban quality. On the other side of Lelystad lies the desolate, dried up fish farm. Between 1960 and 1990, millions of fish were reared in this fishpond area of the polder and transported in lorries, day in day out, to be released in the waters of Northern Europe for the enjoyment of anglers. The fish yield was so high that they were ultimately given away free of charge. But the cormorants from the Oostvaardersplassen proved capable of decisively putting an end to the fish farm, by eating the pools empty in their thousands. Here, again, nature has

conquered the landscape; all that remains are the concrete basins in which the fish were collected before being transported and the two wonderful modernist porters’ houses by architect Romke de Vries.

In the outskirts of Lelystad, there are also two extraordinary landscape projects. On the northern edge of the city stands the Observatory (1977) by artist Robert Morris. A landscape of grassy, concentric circular mounds with viewing gaps.

The Sunsation Festival is held at sunrise on the longest day of the year, when the light enters the inner circle. This is an annual podium for music, poetry and theatre in Lelystad, in honour of the summer solstice on 21 June.

On the western edge stands the monumental sculpture Exposure (2010) by Antony Gormley; a 25 metre-tall man crouching on the dike with his face towards the Markermeer, and you see him thinking: ‘should we reclaim this lake or not’.

Compared to the outskirts, the policy regarding public space in the centre of Lelystad is much stricter. Empty buildings are not tolerated here.

Anything that does not fit in the municipal policy and is too close to the city centre is demolished and seeded with grass. Here and there around the centre, you can see the undefined temporary green areas, which still optimistically bloom with poppies and oxeye daisies in the spring.

Suppose that the space flights of the ISTA become a reality. Then, from the Virgin Galactic you’ll be able to see the city disappear below you like a green and grey patchwork of ideas with the bright orange diamond of the Agora Theatre by Ben van Berkel, UN Studio at its centre. And as you gradually ascend you will behold the Flevopolder landscape with its green pastel colours and geometric fields, like a Mondriaan painting seen from space. Even at a macro level the Flevopolder remains a phenomenon.

DUTCH LIGHT, UPRIGHT GLASS, DESIGNATED AREA JAN VAN ADRICHEM

My father was a market gardener. At first, he grew cauliflower and he had Dutch light. The cauliflower was planted in the fields and he kept cucumbers under the Dutch light. Dutch light was a form of horticulture in which the plants are protected against bad weather by slightly raised wooden window frames. The frames could be lifted, in order to pick the cucumbers.

My father’s cauliflowers made a deeper impression on me than his cucumbers. Cauliflower had leaves that collected water. When the leaves of a picked cauliflower were folded around it for protection, if you were standing near your father, big splashes of ice-cold water fell into your boots. If you weren’t awake already - picking cauliflower was a morning activity - you certainly were after such an invasive drenching. It was an absolute shock to your consciousness.

My father’s market garden was located on a road in a polder near Nootdorp, to the north-east of Delft, among other market gardens and the farms of our neighbours. Around 1960, my father switched to upright glass: greenhouses where he grew cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce. Our house was separated from his garden, but stood on the same road, a few hundred metres further. My father had that house built in 1954. My parents still live there today, now boxed-in by huge greenhouse complexes. The old market garden has been transformed into a piece of grassland.

Life in the polder was ‘basic’ and appeared unchanging because you lived with the seasons.

They dictated what needed to be done with the land, its produce and the livestock. This made the countryside seem static, but it never was. The fact that my father was a market gardener - and not a farmer - is already evidence of that, as horticulture involved a far more intensive and advanced use of the land than agriculture or cattle breeding and the yield per square metre was higher. The fact that my father had a lorry and that he switched from Dutch light to greenhouses were clear signs of change and progress. Of course the farmers and market gardeners lived with the seasons, but their cooperatives, auctions and cattle markets also connected them with a larger, modern world.

Farmers and market gardeners became ‘industrialized’, trusted to new technology and increased in scale, but that could not prevent them from eventually being pushed aside by the advancing urbanization in the area. They became confined to small designated areas - like Indians on a reservation. Farmers and market gardeners

were uprooted by a new reality. If you look at it unsentimentally, they also contributed towards that change and profited from it, because their compulsorily purchased land for building was more expensive than land for agriculture or horticulture. So while it’s true they lost their land, they also reaped the profits.

Living in the polder was no easy way of life. In my experience it was full of heavy and dirty work, hardship and cold. Not my kind of thing. But others loved it and were proud of their - supposed - independence. When I reminisce about my father’s business and the polder landscape, what comes to mind? What did I see as a boy?

I can still visualize the crops and the Dutch light and the lorry in which my father’s vegetables were taken first to the shed to be sorted, and on to the auction. I can recollect the vastness of the green pasture on all sides, the yellow hayfields or the corn, which I could only just see over due to my height. My memories of the cornfields in the area, and on either side of the trunk road from The Hague to Utrecht, are mainly of harvesting, often under the deafening noise of the fighter jets from Iepenburg. There were poppies, cornflowers and camomile scattered among the yellow of the cornfield and above it the obligatory clear blue sky. Harvesting corn and haymaking were something special, because you could see how the neighbours drove across the field in combine harvesters, making straw bales from the stalks while simultaneously collecting the grain, or how tractors turned over the cut grass with machines.

Agricultural machines were big and impressive and they caused drama. Quite a few animals that lived in the corn- or hayfields were driven out or chopped to pieces by the blades of the combines or other machines. There was no distinction between the animals that bowed before the storm; pheasants, ducks, hares, rabbits or weasels, martens and polecats – all were driven out or killed. If you sat by the dam, where a field opened onto the polder road, you could see them.

Harvesting caused casualties, but those casualties were a side issue. That was not the case in the autumn, during shooting season, when people went out hunting. Together with the local farmers, who leased out their land for the hunt and often worked as beaters, the hunters took to the fields led by a gamekeeper to shoot hares, rabbits, ducks, geese and pheasants. To me it was a terrible sight; as was the endangered hare hung up by its hind legs in the shed - as a trophy and food. Although

its meat was of course delicious, at least: when you didn’t bite uncomfortably hard on the pellets of shot that felled the animal.

After school, groups of children from the area organized a variation on the hunt: hiking trips through the polder, on which we brought planks for crossing the ditches. Such a trip was not entirely without risk, because you could encounter angry rams, or yearlings with their wildly irrational behaviour. Those hiking trips provided images and memories of the vastness of the land, with larks, lapwings and godwits and their inalienable calls, the breeze of the wind and the warmth of the sun.

These are memories that are more than just visual.

They are experiences that have remained with me.

I can recollect ‘how it was in the pasture’ in my mind’s eye, but I can also smell, hear and feel it physically - as if I’m still there. While the treks across the land were not particularly dramatic or exceptional, they were evidently intense and penetrating.

In historical terms, the polders around Delft are areas that became submerged through peat cutting, which were impoldered again to create a functional piece of land. It became agricultural and horticultural acreage for farmers and market gardeners. Visitors virtually never realize that what they find attractive about the polder landscape was inspired by the visual conventions that Dutch landscape painters developed in their work in the seventeenth century and later. The viewer has learned to find the polder landscape attractive via landscape paintings. For farmers and market gardeners these are fairly pointless perspectives; they have a very different relationship to the landscape, in which maintenance, work and profit take priority. These days, they themselves are a marginal minority. My father - at 85 years of age - devotes himself to his vegetable garden and greenhouse and even still trims the boxwood in the ornamental garden in front of his house.

And sometimes I eat his home-grown hobby cucumbers.

As I write this, it occurs to me that my father’s ornamental and vegetable garden and his care for them - far more than being the result of the aesthetics of landscape painters - is the rational logic, in miniature, of the engineers who tended to organize the polders compactly and clearly and for functional use. What my father now cares for is still cultivated nature - albeit on a small scale and in a context that I can barely still relate to in my memories.

CLUB DONNY #9 2012 > 33

DONNY’S FAVOURITES

NAGELE Nagele was designed as a modernist village by the architectural team ‘De 8’ between 1948 and 1954. The final design by Aldo van Eyck and de 8 was shown at the CIAM 8 meeting in 1956. Since it was built on reclaimed land, a clean slate, the entire village was designed from scratch, including the greenery. Aldo van Eyck proposed that the town be designed around 3 principles: 1. a non-hierarchical organization with mixed social groups, 2. a windbreak of trees to give the village a spatial character and stand out in the polder landscape, and 3. an open green center. In Museum Nagele, a small permanent exhibition shows documents, drawings and plans relating to the original design of Nagele.

LOTHAR BAUMGARTEN – DIE NAME DER BAUME Lothar Baumgarten (Rheinsberg, 1944). The son of an anthropologist, Baumgarten lived for several years with an indigenous tribe in the Venezuelan Amazon region, and in the 1960s he became one of the first artists to explore representations of minority cultures and their absence from western cultural representation. In his work he tries to bridge the gap between nature and culture. For that he focussed on ‘primitive’ cultures, specially on the Yanomamö-Indianen in the Amazones, where he lived between 1978-1980. He incorporates his views and experiences in installations, photos assemblies, books and films. Die name der Baume was an exceptional exhibition published in the form of a very beautifully designed artist book at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven in 1982. You still can get your hands on this limited edition at; www.abebooks.co.uk IRIS AND HEMEROCALIS NURSERY In Rutten, a small village in the Noordoostpolder, a fabulous nursery can be found that speciliazes in Iris and Hemerocalis. They have a huge collection of more than 1000 different species. You can visit it from April to October on Saturdays. For more information; www.kwekerij-joosten.nl DESCENT OF THE FLANEUR – OPEN CITY BY TEJU COLE Teju Cole’s sophisticated first novel Open City reads like a spider diagram of collective and personal histories; from New York City, in particular abdominal Manhattan, slender threads trace the stories of immigrants back to their ports of origin and bind them to the geography of the urban landscape. www.bookmunch.com MARINUS BOEZEM, DE GROENE KATHEDRAAL (THE GREEN CATHEDRAL; 1978-1996) In Flevoland’s geometric polder, in Almere Hout, a ‘gothic’ cathedral can be found. No sky-high stone vaults and immense stained glass windows, but a cathedral that is formed by a group of trees. Artist Marinus Boezem (Leerdam, the Netherlands, 1934) planted 178 poplars (Populus Nigra Italica) according to the ground plan of the Reims Notre-Dame (1211-1290). Gothic architecture has organic origins: the stone columns, the crossribbed vaults and the adorned capitals refer to tree trunks, branches and foliage. De Groene Kathedraal is transformed to its original source of inspiration. In contrast to the 13th century French cathedral that was built for eternity, the cathedral in Almere has a temporary symbolic function. The specific poplar that was chosen grows very fast, but has a life span of only approximately thirty years. Now the trees have reached Reims cathedral’s height of thirty, decay sets in slowly. In May and June, Museum De Paviljoens organises daytours to De Groene Kathedraal and other works of land art in Flevoland. www.depaviljoens.nl WATERLOOPBOS, THE FOREST OF WATER FLOW: TEST SETUP BECOMES NATURAL AREA In 1944 the Voorster forest was planted. It’s one of Noodoostpolder’s oldest forests. Until 1990 a part of it was used as test area for the Water Flow Laboratory Markenesse. In the forest, engineering works from all kinds of projects around the world have been built as scale models, such as the Delta Works in Zeeland (Netherlands) and the port of Lagos (Nigeria). Since 2005 the forest is publicly accessible. Its owner, the Dutch foundation Natuurmonumenten allows the area to be gradually taken over by nature.

SUN ARAW AND THE CONGOS We love to quote Cameron Stallone of Sun Araw as he explains; I think most of our experiences are very hard to talk about. No words needed at the live performance in London; We wish we could guarantee some sort of incredible moment of self-discovery, but we can’t control your emotions! You’ll figure it out. Icon Give Thank, the collaborative album between Sun Araw, The Congos and M Geddes Gengras that’s out right now on RVNG, is still a complete mindfuck. It’s not that it’s especially hard to listen to, it’s just that when you put it on, it feels like you’ve just taken all the drugs that have ever existed, and the world’s been blurry and not at all in focus until those first watery notes come in, and then things start to get clear. www.thefader.com LA MADRE, IL FIGLIO E L’ARCHITETTO (THE MOTHER, THE SON AND THE ARCHITECT) The short film La Madre, il figlio e l’architetto is about a church in the form of a sphere in Gibellina in Sicily.

Petra Noordkamp came across this church by chance and became intrigued by its remarkable design. Her fascination with this building intensified when she discovered that this church was designed by the Italian architect Ludovico Quaroni. He was the father of Emilio Quaroni, a young man with whom Noordkamp had a brief relationship in the 1990s. In 2001 Emilio killed his mother. In this film Noordkamp investigates in what prompted Emilio to commit this act, but she particularly wants to reveal how the architectural perception of a building is tinted by an event 15 years earlier. You can order the DVD through www.petranoordkamp.nl RAPESEED (KOOLZAAD IN DUTCH) – BRASSICA NAPUS Rapeseed is a bright yellow flowering member of the mustard or cabbage family: Brassicaceae. It is known for the production of vegetable oil. As one of the first crops after the reclamation of the land, rapeseed was planted in Flevoland to prepare the soil for future agrarian use, creating endless yellow fields in early spring.

34 < CLUB DONNY #9 2012

Club Donny is a biannual magazine on the personal experience of nature in the urban environment presented by Samira Ben Laloua, Frank Bruggeman and Ernst van der Hoeven.

PAGE 01 / 36 View from ICC Building on Hong Kong, Welkin Ji PAGE 02 / 35 Garden Gus van der Hoeven, Manhattan Kansas, Talina van der Hoeven TEXTPAGE 03 The Wind’s Visit, Yeb Wiersma TEXTPAGE 04 The Urban Harvesters, David Leda TEXTPAGE 05 R16, Frank Bruggeman TEXTPAGE 06 Stinging Nettle PAGE 07 / 30 Lobby, New Otani Hotel, Tokyo, Stephan van Vliet PAGE 08 / 29 Homeruskwartier, Almere Poort, Maarten Feenstra PAGE 09 / 28 Green in the City, Beirut, Petrovsky and Ramone PAGE 10 / 27 Bologna, Marcel van der Meijs PAGE 11 / 26 Schokbeton farm, Kraggenburg, Yeb Wiersma PAGE 12 / 25 West Fries Gasthuis, Hoorn, Wouter Sibum PAGE 13 / 24 Roadside A50, Wolfheze, Wilfried Nijhof PAGE 14 / 23 Orchideeënhoeve, Luttelgeest, Annick Kleizen PAGE 15 / 22 Lidcactus, Gedempte Zalmhaven, Rotterdam, Ben Cohen PAGE 16 / 21 Garden, East Village New York, Yasuyuki Takagi PAGE 17 / 20 Zuiderpark, Den Haag, Bert de Jong PAGE 18 / 19 Oostvaardersplassen, Flevoland, Yeb Wiersma TEXTPAGE 31 Stinging Nettle TEXTPAGE 32 Above Lelystad, Elias Tieleman TEXTPAGE 33 Dutch Light, Upright Glass, Designated Area, Jan van Adrichem TEXTPAGE 34 Donny’s favourites TRANSLATION / Mike Ritchie DESIGN / Ben Laloua/Didier Pascal PRINTING / die Keure, Bruges PUBLISHER / post editions www.post-editions.com SUBSCRIPTION / www.bruil.info ISSN: 1879-7466 © 2012 Club Donny www.clubdonny.com The authors and contributors.

Reproduction without permission prohibited.

This publication was made possible

by Museum De Paviljoens, Almere, as part of the project Mapping Flevoland # 1.

Thanks to the Province of Flevoland. www.depaviljoens.nl