garden consultations
Would you like to turn your balcony or rooftop into a beautiful edible garden? Do you want some tips on how to make your community garden more productive? How about setting up a garden for your office, to supply salads and herbs for the staff? Would you like us to help you make a garden for your school, and even to teach the children to harvest and care for the crops?
We have a range of skills: permaculture design, creating mini food forests, making beautiful edible oases on rooftops and balconies, cultivating veggies, herbs and edible flowers, and transforming tiled backyards into colorful gardens. We can also advise you about how to create a balanced garden or balcony that will attract pollinators and other beneficial insects: working with nature helps the environment and improves your garden’s production.
The options are countless, and our multilingual gardeners and designers would love to help you get started. We can provide you with a consultation in or around Amsterdam. Contact us for more information at gardensams@cityplot.org
AT HOME
Whatever your edible wishes might be, we can come to your home and help you figure out how to plan and grow your dream garden.
Our consultations include advice about what, where and when to plant. We can show you how to combine herbs, flowers, vegetables and fruit in order to create a biodiverse ecosystem that will make your surroundings more beautiful and provide you with nutritious, delicious food.
We can also help you set up a home composting system with worms or bokashi, and give you some tips for building healthy soil. We can also help you create a herb spiral, or a raised bed if you have a garden. We can even help you plan a food forest for your garden, with edible perennial plants.
There are countless possibilities so if you’re interested, send an e-mail to gardensams@cityplot.org with your specific garden dreams and we’ll get back to you with more relevant information soon!
AT SCHOOL
We believe that every school needs a garden, and that every child should learn how to grow food!
We can help daycares, elementary schools and middle schools to create a garden in any available space and at any scale. We have experience designing for specific schools and environments, and in building square-meter boxes, raised beds, vertical gardens, herb spirals and classroom windowsill boxes full of salads and herbs.
We have also developed four-season curricula for all ages (ages 2-16) that focus on seeds, crops, harvesting, and food preparation. Our specialty is garden design in collaboration with children, teachers, parents and the surrounding community. For the youngest children, our approach is highly sensory, including music, movement, taste, smell and touch. For older children, our lessons include some basic theory as well as hands-on garden work.
AT WORK
Imagine if you could harvest fresh salad greens and herbs for tea during your lunchtime break!
A little bit of lunchtime gardening at the office is a great way to stay alert and healthy.
Let us help you to set up a beautiful green rooftop or balcony office garden!
We will first set up a design together, and if needed we can arrange boxes, vertical structures, seating and tables incorporating your crops and suited to your particular space. We can then either plant up the roof together and teach you how to seed and harvest, or we can pass by on a regular basis to keep the harvest coming on a regular basis.
RESTAURANTS
We have worked with the chefs of several restaurants in setting up crop plans tailored to their wishes, and planting and harvesting so that fresh greens, veggies, edible flowers and herbs can be harvested all year round.
In Amsterdam, we set up and maintained a rooftop restaurant garden where the chefs harvested tomatoes, herbs and flowers for their dishes. We also designed an elaborate box garden where clients could harvest their own herbs, leaves and flowers for their tea, salads and sandwiches. And from 2015 until they moved we took care of the gardens and greenhouse at Restaurant As in Amsterdam, growing herbs, microgreens, vegetables and various edible and flowers for the kitchen.
