Shadow Garden ~ a short timeline

Shadow is the place where the light does not shine. What processes take place while we do not see them? In the Shadow Garden, we as humans literally move in the shadow of the plants, organisms, the soil, and earth systems. We delve into twilight, shadow, mist, and the grey area of ​​hidden knowledge that we bring to light. How can a garden be a place where people can reshape their connection with their living environment?

With the Shadow Garden, De Onkruidenier is developing a test garden for Future Gardening; a paradigm shift to reframe preconceived ideas about gardening. Since 2022, we have been leaving traditional expectations of gardens and gardening behind. What attitude do we adopt when we learn to be open to instructions given to us by organisms beyond human resources?

2022 ~ learning to listen to an ecosystem
In 2022, De Onkruidenier and Zone2Source receive the keys to the former monastery garden of the Belgian entry for the 1972 Floriade. The lock is rusted through and must be cut open before we can enter.
The garden is completely overgrown; hardly anything remains visible of the original design and the rigid structure laid out by architect René Pechère. The first steps feel disorienting: Where have we landed?

What begins as a plan to garden with tools and plants brought along quickly shifts. The question is no longer what we are going to do, but how can we learn to listen to the garden’s ecosystem, and how can we understand our own role within it? We decide to return weekly as observers in a process that is already underway without us.

2023 ~ break in management
In 2023, the garden slowly becomes a permanent part of De Onkruidenier’s artistic working practice. The collective meets regularly in the garden, as a place for observation, inspiration, and knowledge exchange.

At the same time, this also becomes the year of an insurmountable rift. Without our knowledge, twelve of the thirteen boxwood shrubs are removed. These shrubs were originally part of the garden’s design in 1972 and supported the garden’s spatial structure.
The intervention confronts us with what one might call institutional gardening: a form of management that intervenes without alignment with the ecological or relational field that has developed. The question that surfaced was: were these boxwood shrubs not carriers of botanical heritage rather than maintenance logic?

2024 ~ archaeology of gestures
In 2024, the collaboration with philosopher Samar Nasrullah Khan begins. Together, we develop the research project ‘archaeology of gestures’.

Instead of approaching the boxwood as an object, the focus shifts to new forms of care: to touch, movement, and repetition. In that context, the boxwood begins to speak to us.

Samar develops a way of presence in which he lends his body and his gestures, as it were, to the plant, so that Mrs. Buxus can appear through him as a form of expression. These encounters and collaboration with Samar lead to an essay that is later included in Queer Flora, Fauna and Funga, compiled by Frances Cannon and published by Valiz.

2025 ~ spiritual ecology and Japan
In 2025, inspired by archaeological research into pre-medieval forms of nature religion in North Holland, Jonmar delves into the spiritual dimensions of nature perception, and into historical views in which the divine could manifest itself in a flower, a phenomenon, or an experience in one’s immediate living environment.

During a residency at KKARC in Kyoto, he travels to Japanese gardens strongly influenced by Shinto thought. These gardens become an important reference as a way of perceiving in which nature and spiritual presence are not separated. In the same year, conceptual artist Jacqueline Heerema is also in Japan. This leads to an unexpectedly rich correspondence and an invitation to collaborate in the garden in Amsterdam later on.

2026 ~ nocturnal ecologies
In 2026, the realization emerges that the garden, despite years of regular presence, has never been systematically observed in its nocturnal state. Yet the box tree moth is a moth, and many processes take place outside of daylight.

Within the framework of nocturnal ecologies, the focus shifts to moon phases, nightlife, soil processes, and the role of lime as a medium between history, ecological memory, and transformation.
In this context, guest artist Jacqueline Heerema develops her project Shadow Porcelain, a quest for the relationship between materiality and emptiness.