RECAP: Reclaiming Public Space Excursion (part of Rotterdam Architecture Month)

During the last weekend of Architecture Month, we visited Sharida’s Garden and the interventions of De Groene Golf op Zuid. Two powerful grassroots greening projects in Rotterdam South. These initiatives are doing more than planting: they’re actively rebuilding our fractured relationship with nature and empowering communities themselves.

These gardens show that every piece of green matters. Not just visually, but as part of complex ecological systems. Water cycles, pollination, mental health, climate resilience, it’s all connected. That’s why these citizen-led projects are so powerful. They don’t wait. They experiment, educate, and act. But also they are struggling with their own bottlenecks: continuity in the eyes of the municipality and limited capacity from volunteers helping to maintain the continuity itself. The long term thinking and maintenance approach was especially emphasized by Tom and Lonneke from Groene Golf.

Too often urban planning leaves little room for biodiversity, and even less for understanding it. Many people have never learned how to care for native plants or why wild bees need soil as much as flowers for their habitat. The popular bee hotels we provide often miss the mark. Sharida, however, has identified over 40 wild bee species in her neighborhood. We were inspired by her deep, hands-on knowledge gathered not from books, but cultivated through a close relationship with nature and an experimental land-based approach.

If there is one thing this excursion taught us, it’s to unlearn the fear of “too much green” and make room for what’s wild, local, and alive! Public green isn’t just a government responsibility, it’s something we all have the right to shape and the duty to learn about.

For those who could be interested we are also sharing Sharida’s recommendations over great green initiatives Rotterdam:

• Natuurcafé session in Rottedam: https://rotterdam.knnv.nl/agenda/

• Newsletter from sharing information from Rotterdam’s neighborhood initiatives https://groenestad071.nl/plaatsen