Soil Assembly at Zone2Source, Amstelpark, May 30 & 31, 2026

Date and time: Saturday May 30th, 20 – 23 hrs
Location: Shadow Garden > Amstelpark
Title: Nocturnal Ecologies

On the night before the full moon, 20 participants gathered in the Shadow Garden, a walled garden that Zone2Source manges together with artist collective the Onkruidenier, for Nocturnal Ecologies. The evening began with tea and a collective reading led by Anne Diestelkamp from the Perennial Reading Group in which we explored the relationships between soil, darkness and atmosphere. The reading was followed by a food intervention by Chen Zou, who also shared her artistic research on darkness and the invisible underground. Later, participants delved into discussion with Anne Diestelkamp and Jonmar van Vlijmen from de Onkruidenier, where they shared their explorations on nocturnal gardening. This conversation transitioned into a workshop on night pollination. Together, participants developed a map of night-blooming plants and sources of nectar for moths and other pollinators while we swarmed through the park at night.

 

 

Date and time: Sunday May 31st, 11- 14
Location: Extreme Salad World (Genomic Gastronomy Garden)
Program: workshop Extreme Salad World: Soil and Taste Test and communual lunch

In the morning Zack Denfield from the Genomic Gastronomy collective guided a workshop on soil and food. The participants harvested dozens of different plants from the Extreme Salad Garden and learned about the garden’s soil cycles and late-spring edible biodiversity. The group made a plant herbarium, a digital map of the site and a biodiverse salad, which became part of a communal lunch. The lunch was made from different ingredients from the Amsterdam foodshed, served on a European soil map tablecloth, and arranged by distance.

 

 

Date and time: Sunday May 31st 14.30 – 17.30
Location: outside of the Shadow Garden
Program: 2nd Gardeners Assembly

In the afternoon, artists, community and activist gardeners gathered in a circle outside the Shadow Garden to exchange experiences. Everyone brought something from their garden – seeds, plants, soil – as a starting point for sharing short stories about their gardens. The discussion was followed by a chromatography workshop by artist-educator Dana Wait. The scientific process of chromatography, which is normally used to assess the health of the soil samples, was used by participants to make soil portraits of their gardens, which then became the basis of a talk around soil health and the challenges, practices and experiences of gardening, as both community work and artistic research. Finally we discussed together how we want to develop the Garden Network that we have started further, visiting and learning from eachother.

 

SoilTribes (101157729) is funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the European Union nor the European Research Executive Agency (REA) can be held responsible for them.