Workshop day ~ 14/4/24 ~Seed sharing and Plant Propagation Workshop

On Sunday 14th of April, at Rib, we celebrated the end of winter dormancy and celebrated that spring is here with a seed sharing and plant propagation workshop from which we wished, more or less secretly, to add more species to shared grounds garden 🐁🌸🌷🌺🍄 alongside enabling a space to share, be together and support new growth.

We started with  Kate's great seed collection and after we were able to get to know the amazing collections by Danni van Amstel (@dannivanamste) , which focused on Dutch endemic species and Shuang Xu (@shuang.x.u), which contained seeds from Hong Kong. Thanks again for your generosity!

After preparing the potting mix (by sieving soil and mixing it with perlite and water), we sowed some seeds and made cuttings from baby's breath from shared grounds garden and some foraged city mint. We also repurposed some supermarket plastic packaging into lil hothouses for the seedlings and cuttings, keeping them warm and humid in these early stages of spring.

By the time we post this, the seedlings have already sprouted as you can see in the last picture! Thank y'all for coming, see you soon in the green, again!

Shared Grounds in Grote Prijs van Charlois

In January we were honoured to be nominated for the 'Grote Prijs van Charlois’, a prize created by the district council of Charlois in Rotterdam to put initiators who make a valuable contribution to the district in the limelight. There were many amazing projects nominated, with Etienne Tjon-A-Kon taking out the grand prize for their wonderful work with young people from the neighbourhood.

It was a great evening to learn about other social initiatives of the area and toast to everyone's achievements and hard work. Cheers! And thank you to the district council for their nomination!

A list of the nominated projects include:

Etienne Tjon-A-Kon – opent elke zaterdag Huis van de Wijk Clemensstraat voor jongeren

Sido Silvius – ruimt 2x per week oud vuil op rond Charloisse Hoofd

Hans en Carla van der Leer – runnen speeltuin De Waal

Kate Price & Guillem S. Arquer – Shared Grounds rondom Gouwplein

Anouk van Reijen – VVV Oud-Charlois

Zuidhoek Spookstraat 2023 - Halloween

Rest Time - See you in 2024 :)

 

We take a little rest the next while to sleep, recuperate and dream about next attuned movements (brewing/fermenting encouraged!)... Wishing you all a regenerative shift into 2024... BRB <3 K&G singing out from Shared Grounds

Workshop Day :) ~ 1/12/23 ~ Insect Hotel Building Workshop!

We gathered early on Friday, in the below freezing conditions, to try make some warm homes for our insects companions at Shared Grounds. 

We started the day out by spreading the wood shaving we had saved from our wood carving workshop, bringing this generative 'waste' back to the garden to feed into the soil. 

Looking back at the information we had gathered about building insect hotels, see earlier blog post here, we wanted to come up with some forms that would enable good air flow (lowering the risk of damp and mould development) and involve sensible materials which we also had available that we could reuse. We first had a walk around SG and thought it would make sense to place one hotel from the green fence on the edge of the park, which was quite open and easily accessible, and to make another one which would be self standing within the more overgrown and dense parts of the garden. 

We had a good look over the different materials we had to hand and decided to make the insect hotels from a combination of wood of old pallets received via our gemeente wijktuin friend Roland, metal chicken wire Guillem had laying around (to help keep smaller pieces in place), bamboo sticks collected about, and dried branches picked up from the trees and shrubs. We wanted to use the material with as little wastage as possible, so decided to use the wood slats length to its benefit, forming a bit of a modular structure. Each of us set about on a task be it screwing the form together or cutting the bamboo and branches into smaller sections. Even with the chilling air it was fun to get down to work, figuring out together along the way the forms and components which we could implement into the finished hotels, such as including a little roof to keep it dry :)

We finished the day by installing one of the hotels along the fence in the radiating sunshine! Before sharing some hot noodles to warm our insides :) Cheers to those that joined, we had a great time, hoping the insects enjoy the new addition :)

Here's a photo recap shot by Silvia and Guillem

About wooden pallets' toxicity

 

how to know if a pallet is safe: 

- no signs of spills or leakage of items

- stamps that can be found: 

IPPC logo, International Plant Protection Convention, prevent spreading of invasive species and plant disease, pallets have to be treated. They regulate so wood products ensure that they meet the specifications for international shipping. They require treatment by one of the following methods: 

1) Heat Treatment [HT] - heated for at least 30 min. at least at 132.8 °F /56° C -> Stamped with [HT]

2) Chemical Fumigation [MB] - fumigated with methyl bromide -> stamped with [MB], since March 2010 it has been banned.

3) Debarked [DB] - debarked under IPPC regulations, and many pallets have this stamp. Wood packaging materials must be debarked prior to being heat treated or fumigated to meet regulations. 

4) Kiln Dried [KD] - dried by steaming in order to bringing all wood products to moisture content levels that will be subject to minimal moisture-related damage.

- other stamps:

Europe:

EUR: EURO pallet this is the logo for the old system, not bad, but EPAL is better.

EPAL: European Pallet Association Logo

EUR + EPAL: EUR logo plus EPAL logo is good. EUROPE DOES NOT ALLOW CHEMICAL TREATMENT OF PALLETS.

International:

GB-FC0843 - Country code + Registration Number+

IPPC logo

+

DB-HT - Treatment code 

- do not use colored pallets, they are often used for chemicals

- what if there is no stamp or marking on the pallet? Most likely for domestic transport, and do not require an IPPC stamp because it is not for international transport. Most likely safe.

SUMMARY: 

To use: DB, HT, KD, EPAL

Not to use: MB, EUR, colored pallets

Working Day 8 ~ 19/11/23 ~ Time for PLANTS!

Today was the day we introduced the new additions generously given to us by the Botanische tuin Afrikaanderwijk <3 !!

We began like usual doing a little clean up job before then moving the plants from their temporary home on the Rib balcony to Shared Grounds. We decided to begin by grouping the plants according to their growing height, small low growers, medium height and tall, before then distributing them over the more open bed and trying to distribute them fairly evenly around the patch. We weeded out the ground a little bit, and were careful whilst opening up the soil to insert the new plants, trying to be as considerate as we could over the disruptions we were implementing. It also gave us a moment to reacquaint ourselves with the different species that we were bringing in, from ground covers, tall growing perennials, and bushy shrubs. 

We hope these new additions will introduce new layers and textures into the garden, bolstering the ecosystem chorus to a grand and complex form :)

Wood Carving Workshop with the PZI students ~ 14/11/2023

The other day we got visited by the students of the Piet Zwart Institute and wood carving enthusiast amateurista and tutor Bernd Krauß. This was our invitation:

"Shared Grounds invites you for an afternoon of wood carving in and amongst the shrubs and trees of the Gouwplein Park in Charlois. Over the last months we have been setting aside branches to whittle and now seems the moment! - perhaps you want to make a new walking stick, have a project in mind or just want to carve for the fun, feel very welcome to sit with us between the trees and return your wood clippings back to the soil in the process. You can make something for yourself, for another, or for the park (we can install them after we finish). We will have tools, decorative details and snacks ready to go, though please feel free to BYOK (bring your own knife :-) and anything else you might want to use."

The students and Bernd got to Rib after walking all the way from the city center. They were a bit unfortunate since it rained for most of their trek. Even though, even under heavy rain, they managed to find branches while moving their bodies through the city towards the south. After some snacks, tea and coffee we went for a stroll around Shared Grounds.

Our idea for the workshop was to have them carving in the garden, after every knife intrusion into the sticks, wooden bits and flakes falling into the ground of the park, re/integrating themselves [back] into the carbon cycles... But it was still raining, everyone was wet and tired so we collectively decided to carve inside at Rib. We laid a plastic tarp on the ground (to collect all the carved wood) and made a circle with white foldable chairs. While carving, we got to talk to the group and get a feeling of the dynamics and relationships that give life to the master program at the PZI. For the carving we used a wide range of tools, from simple kitchen knifes to the special carving blades and saw from Bernd. 

Most of the carvings went into the abstract realm, following and letting themselves be guided by the shape of the branches and their nots. Fully removing the bark, carving snaky silhouettes around the bark, poligonal cuttings, and soft handles for walking sticks. Some students took their sticks, others wanted them to be part of the garden.

It was a great evening in which we achieved to make a welcoming environment and to provide a bit of gezelligheid for the students. We hope to see their faces again, but this time with a bit of soil under their nostrils and fingertips while (maybe) collecting fallen leaves to compost?

[Next steps: introducing wood flakes + carved sticks in the garden.]