Iduna Paalman seeks nature in urban excitement. As her own body changes with the seasons, so does the city; in allotments, gazebos and parks, she sees how the city falls asleep and reawakens with whispers. These places, with their plants and trees and flowers, call for touch, walking long evenings with a loved one through the twilight, taking off your clothes and jumping into the water somewhere. But on the other hand they invite you to retreat into your cocoon. In a notebook, Iduna writes down how urban greenery echoes in her longing to break out and reflect again.
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Whispering GREEN SPACE No:
1
Volkstuindersvereniging Blijdorp
Late October, rough autumn weather, Volkstuindersvereniging Blijdorp. Inside a gazebo on a lush piece of allotment garden I sit with my lover in front of a hearth fire, which lays a soft glow on our cheeks. My lover feels under my jumper with his fingers and holds his hand under my right breast like a shell. He teasingly pinches my nipple and slides even closer to me. Like the garden, I am trying to prepare my body for winter. Thick jumpers, greasy body creams, fire, warmth, anything just to be enveloped. The garden is almost freeze ready: everything has been harvested and put away. Vic, my neighbour in the flat where we live and the owner of this cottage we get to use for a few days, has dropped by. Together with him we wander through the garden. To the side, we find some dazed palm cabbage and chard. We pull out the last stalks. He points to a robin, saying: ‘A regular guest, see how heavy he is? His body is also winterised.’ I jot down in a small notebook I carry in the inside pocket of my winter coat: October, we are getting full and fat, our chest is glowing in hot red hues.
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Whispering GREEN SPACE No:
2
Essenburg Park
In 1847 the first train ran from Amsterdam to Rotterdam. Where the railway was then there is now a park, Essenburg Park, with a flower-picking garden, a vegetable garden, and large tracts of land where nature winds itself around the city. I walk through it in the middle of December. Towards the Wilde Weide, a large open field that seems to want to eat me. Where is the city and its reassuring enclosure? I feel watched. Shivery. The last time I was in an open field was last summer; it was bloody hot. I was lying on a rug with my lover; he was slowly caressing my bare skin. Now my skin is asleep. This glade demands solitude. Here dogwort, thistles, sagebrush and primrose rule. I write down: Is my skin asleep, or is it preparing to bloom?
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Whispering GREEN SPACE No:
3
Helpt Elkander
I spoke to Iona Daniel. She is a playwright and audio maker, and she and her boyfriend Tommy have recently set up an allotment with a cottage in the Helpt Elkander garden park. From their home in the Kruisplein neighbourhood, where among all the concrete there is little in the way of coziness or much sense of community, these city dwellers became soil-eaters, fire-starters, sprawl planners. ‘When digging in the ground, we got nothing but bad surprises,’ she tells me. ‘The soil was full of plastic debris. It is so indicative of how we as humans own and occupy the city. We spent months trying to liberate the garden. It felt like we kept giving the city back new bits of greenery.’ Iona is getting to know her garden slowly, as if it is a human being that you have to let take its course first, to see what it wants, where it wants. The soil life is rich, she says. There are frogs and salamanders, just like that, fifteen minutes away. ‘We often go to our cottage late at night, to wake up there in the morning. Just to be on holiday for a night and a morning.’ I imagine what it is like to have such a piece of land of your own. How I would work in it with my lover, day after day with our hands in the black earth, our sweaty bodies in oversized overalls. In my notebook I write down: Deep in the earth you will find all the city traces. City life can quickly merge into earth life, if only you look down, and dare to make yourself dirty.
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Whispering GREEN SPACE No:
4
DakAkker
Cautious spring, finally. Vic is busy pruning. If you want something to grow, he says, you must first cut it back. Vic tells me that March is a good sowing month. With his firm hands he gently nudges the earth above the tiny seeds. Soon everything will be overwhelmingly green and colourful. I think again of last summer when my lover saw me outside in a bikini for the first time; I felt like a young calf, too long in the dark, uncomfortable, adrift, wobbly and happy. The first sun, the first real sun of the year, why does it remind me of being undressed, of being naked together? I visit The DakAkker, a 1,000 square-metre rooftop farm on top of the Schieblock. Here, vegetables, edible flowers and fruit are grown and bees are kept. It is Rotterdam’s tallest garden and one of the largest roof gardens in Europe. It smells fresh; you seem to be in the mountains. My body forgets its fear of heights. Here it is quiet and busy at the same time; everything hums and buzzes and grows but is also far from the city noise. Down below there is a different life; up here an oasis is nestled right above all the cars, roads, design studios and consultancy firms. In my notebook I write a short poem by Eileen Myles:
Roads around mountains
cause we can’t drive
through
That’s Poetry
to Me.
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Whispering GREEN SPACE No:
5
Eigen Hof
I walk with my lover along a thin path, between the gardens of Eigen Hof allotment park. We have left our coats at home, his hand tickling mine like a restless insect. The sound of the birds here is deafening. I have already seen butterflies and bees. I feel a desire to stand still, breathe deeply and place my lips on my lover’s without shame, slowly seeking his tongue with mine. Pushing him against a wall, feeling him against my belly. Breathing heavily into his ear. The air is humid; a clammy summer is approaching. Voluntary gardens and garden parks often seem closed to non-members; they appear as places meant only for people who have been on a waiting list for years. Many garden parks have existed for decades or almost a century, making them seem like closed communities. Meanwhile, there is a new vision; the municipality wants the allotments to be more available to all Rotterdammers. The parks are walking areas for everyone. So also for us. I look around me, at all those beautifully tended flowerbeds, the rustling trees. How do we divide green life in a city? What belongs to us? At home in the evening, I write: The biggest misunderstanding about nature is that it is ours, that it is there for us. That we can do what we want with it.
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Whispering GREEN SPACE No:
6
Schoonoord
Lily leaves lie motionless on the glistening water. Overwhelmingly green trees reflect among them. Not to be missed, but missed every time: the historic Schoonoord garden, a hidden piece of wilderness next to Het Park. Through an 18th century entrance gate and over a brick arch bridge I enter a piece of Rotterdam I have never seen before. Being a city person means relating to the city’s history, and Rotterdam’s history is marked by reconstruction, growth and renewal. But here time has stood still. The first lines of this park were already visible in 1706, and a century later there was a mansion, coach house, stables, greenhouses, a teahouse with a cupola and a gardener’s house. These are still there. What strikes me is the silence. There are supposed to be eight colonies of bees living here, and Japanese carp, kingfishers and a tawny owl. But I hear nothing. I sit down on a small jetty, see my shadow in the water and become aware of my body. I’m sweating, I’m panting, it’s over thirty degrees. Am I an intruder or an addition to the silence? I think of my lover, how beautiful I think he is, how good he smells when he has been in the sun. How my body reacts when he grabs me. I don’t write anything in my notebook but send him a message: Are you coming? It’s so quiet here and even more wonderful than I thought. I want to hide in the bushes with you. I want to break the silence with you. I want the heat with you.
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Whispering GREEN SPACE No:
7
T-Roffa Lab Project
Trees provide coolness; they can make the surroundings feel up to fifteen degrees colder. When you have an allotment, Iona and Vic tell me, you look at the city differently. Suddenly you notice the plants, the flowers spreading seeds, the trees. Suddenly Rotterdam is a green place, and not just made of stone and glass, as many people assume. I think of the T-Roffa Lab Project of TU Delft and Erasmus University, which aims to use a mobile forest to investigate how urban development can be more climate-proof. For the project, thirty-eight mobile trees were erected on the Handelsplein in the summer of 2023 and will be there for two years. I remember walking there with my lover. The trees in their wheeled white boxes looked like giant plants, with us miniature beings in between. Meanwhile, autumn is almost upon us. The trees are already carefully releasing some of their leaves. I have put on my coat again; underneath, my skin is consuming the stored heat. I write the last sentences in my notebook, a piece from a poem, again by Eileen Myles:
I’m overcome
by the cruelty
of nature
no I mean
I’m with
it.