First harvest gathered at Strandeiland community garden

A community food garden on Strandeiland has produced its first harvest. The project, named Onze Tuinen, operates on an 18 by 50 metre plot on the unfinished IJburg island.

Landscape architect Robert Hubers and founder Sanne van de Graaf set up the organic garden with about twenty vegetable beds and three small greenhouses. The site currently grows crops including cabbage, radishes, onions, pak choi, pumpkins, aubergines, gherkins and tomatoes.

Around forty local households participate in the garden, paying an annual contribution of 350 euros. In return, members receive vegetables for roughly forty weeks of the year, take gardening lessons, and help maintain the plots.

Years of preparation and planning

The garden originated seven years ago when Van de Graaf proposed the idea during a public participation meeting about a planned sports complex on Strandeiland. The project required years of consultations with municipal bodies, which intensified after Hubers joined three years ago.

Organisers encountered several obstacles, including negotiations over user land taxes and access to water. Nearby groundwater turned out to be too salty, while regulations complicated plans to draw water from the Markermeer 200 metres away.

In February 2025, ten trucks delivered soil across the empty sands to prepare the growing beds. Work halted briefly this past February when a contractor building adjacent sports fields fenced off the site over safety concerns, temporarily locking volunteers out just as sowing was set to begin.

Community hub on the sand

Onze Tuinen now has a waiting list of twenty people hoping to join. Schoolchildren also visit the adjacent Basket building on Tuesdays and Wednesdays for nature lessons.

Volunteers use the same building to shelter from bad weather and to cook meals together using the harvest. Hubers previously coordinated facade gardens and communal planters on neighbouring Centrumeiland, finding that shared growing spaces help connect new residents in developing areas.

Van de Graaf and Hubers hope to replicate the model in other neighbourhoods. Their broader goal is to establish resident-managed food gardens where children can play and help pick fruit.

Source: Oost Online