Permacultuur Meppel, a community permaculture garden project in the Netherlands

This month it's exactly a year ago we started with this garden project. Autumn 2015 two ladies, Gea and Irma, had written a project plan and asked the town council for permission to start it (and to subsidise it). A month or so later I found out about their plan. We met and so I became part of their 'group'. Early 2016 they organised a 'green café' to attract more interested people from this neighbourhood. Finally in April 2016 the town council gave persmission and even a place to start! As quick as possible a small group of enthousiasts started to turn the far corner of the park into a permaculture garden. I made a design, they all liked it. We started with a 'strawberry tower'. A date was set, flyers handed out, second hand stones and tiles were collected, strawberry plants too.

The day we built the strawberry tower was our start. But the official 'opening' was some months later, when the garden started looking like a real garden.
In this photo you see me building the strawberry tower.


We now know planting a zuchetti in a strawberry tower is not a good idea ... But getting plants and seeds from all kind of people, without having a real planting-plan, we made many mistakes the first year.


So this was a year of getting experiences, learning of mistakes, working nicely together with 'new friends' and having lot of fun! Here's a photo of the official opening day. Jeanet (who's an experienced permaculture gardener) came to tell all visitors about permaculture and to show it in our garden.


More news will follow.

Sorry I did not keep on posting here.
The project goes well. Soon we'll have the fist meeting of the coordination group for planning the activities in the new garden season.
The garden looked nice last year,  but we have to do things in a more organised way to have a better yield.
Our activities involved a lot of 'weaving willow branches' too, as you can see in the picture:

Thanks for posting. I see there's a Facebook page and I'll try following your progress.
In Hurdegaryp there's also such a project which seems to be running quite well, I still have on my agenda to visit there once. Meppel I'll keep in mind too. Even if I don't end up visiting it still makes me happy that such projects are being undertaken. Good luck!

J Grouwstra wrote:Thanks for posting. I see there's a Facebook page and I'll try following your progress.
In Hurdegaryp there's also such a project which seems to be running quite well, I still have on my agenda to visit there once. Meppel I'll keep in mind too. Even if I don't end up visiting it still makes me happy that such projects are being undertaken. Good luck!

J. you're welcome at our garden. Please contact us first, so we'll be there when you come. You can send a message via the Facebook page.

We (Permacultuur Meppel) organise a yearly event, Plantjes Deel Dag, which means we share plants. Visitors can come with their seedlings, cuttings or other plants they want to swap. But also people who don't have any plant to bring in can come and have some plants for free. There's coffee, tea and home baked cakes! Last year, end of April, was the first time, and now last Sunday, May 12, was the second time we had this event.
Also the local news media showed up; you can see this video from the local television on YouTube now:
webpage
Of course it's in Dutch ...