‘Look, do you see him digging? Beautiful right?’ Tamara Stijf (42) can hardly contain her excitement about the unknown, yellow-black-winged guest in the bed of the recently planted bulbous acacia. “If I sit here in the shade, I can watch that swarming for half an hour.”
Not that Stijf was always so fond of flora and fauna. When she moved into her social rental home in the Zwolle district of Pierik two years ago, she confessed somewhat embarrassed, had a pear tree removed from behind and completely tiled the front garden. ‘A wasp already made me panic. And tiles are boring but easy – they don’t take a bite out of your budget either.’
Without the encouragement and help of the Straatboer Foundation, she would not have quickly decided to remove a row of tiles from the front yard. These made way for, among other things, heavenly keys and a modest butterfly bush. A bumblebee hotel has sprung up in the corner.
The boxwood she planted herself is visibly having a hard time due to the drought. But the tomato plant benefits from the Mediterranean temperatures, which have also reached Overijssel. “I’ve got four left, so I’ll let this one turn a nice red.” She can safely leave watering to her 4-year-old daughter. She recently also enjoyed the ladybugs. “You didn’t see that here before.”
Well-being and biodiversity
A bee wolf, Christaan Kuipers (32) has now identified the wasp-like digger. He should definitely have Stijf appear in an advertisement for his Straatboer foundation. Because exactly this is his mission: to clear the gardens of social rented houses and to generate more enthusiasm for biodiversity in the city. ‘It’s a start’, says the ecologist about the greened strip of barely 2 square meters. “But you have to start somewhere.”
Stone is no longer sacred in the city – on the contrary. Last year, approximately 1.5 million tiles were ‘wiped’ in the Netherlands in the unofficial Dutch Championships, this year the counter is so far at more than 1 million. Governments, both local and national, are paying more and more attention to the importance of greenery in urban areas, a recent inventory by researchers from Wageningen University also revealed. De-stoning contributes to health and well-being, enhances climate resilience in both wet and hot periods and promotes urban biodiversity.
But getting the stones out of town is easier said than done. With new construction, greenery is given more space, although there are no standards for this. De-stoning is particularly difficult in existing neighbourhoods, according to the Wageningen researchers. Corporations find trees difficult or point to the municipality. They are again concerned with underground pipes or maintenance costs in times when everything has to be cut back. Kuipers: ‘Everyone wants to, but too little happens.’
Moreover, the climate issue again appears to have a strong social dimension. Neighborhoods where many people live with less income, according to the report, are the most fossilized. You can see it in Pierik. In some front gardens in Crocusstraat, the greenery is limited to a doormat of artificial grass or the weeds between the tiles.
Yet it is a prejudice that social tenants have nothing to do with greenery, says Kuipers. ‘But it is a target group that sometimes needs a push.’
Many tenants simply do not feel that a house is really theirs. And they often have other things on their mind. Moreover, professionally redesigning a front garden can easily cost a thousand euros. Straatboer works with volunteers and largely ‘second-hand’ plants from private individuals, from public green spaces or donated by companies. About 25 gardens have now been brightened up like this.
Do not push marigolds
As it turns out, the metamorphoses are contagious and connecting. ‘The buuf has also started working’, says Saskia (50). ‘We planted those Spanish daisies together.’ When she moved into the rented house last year, the front garden was ‘all tile’. But her husband had just died and she was diagnosed with cancer. “So gardening wasn’t a priority. That’s why I was happy with the help. Now I find a lot of distraction in it. I’m sitting comfortably with a cup of coffee watching the bumblebees.’
The marigolds should not be forced on the residents, says Kuipers. And the sizing is close. For Ria Oldenbeuving in her sixties, the modest border along the sidewalk is already quite something. “Weeding every day wouldn’t be a chore for me,” she says. “But this one looks a lot brighter.”
The tenants may be enthused by lady’s mantle and wild marjoram, but at the administrative level the spirits are not always that ripe. One of those overgrown willow trees that offer a noticeable cooling effect just down the Cyclamenstraat? ‘The housing corporations quickly call such a garden decrepit’, says Kuipers. Recently, a policy officer kindly but urgently requested to keep the tiles that have been removed in case future residents would like to have a ‘low-maintenance’ garden again. ‘Fortunately, colleagues intervened. That’s exactly what we want to get rid of, they said.’
Kuipers believes that it is not only housing associations that have yet to make the switch. While the municipality of Zwolle is nurturing its project, a whole row of poplars was recently felled on the edge of the district. “Then you feel very small for a moment.”
The ecologist is convinced that the big challenge in the future will not be how to heat our homes in the winter, but how to find enough cooling in the summer. Especially in the city, a ‘heat island’ where it can easily be 2 degrees warmer. That’s why, he says, as the temperature has risen to 30 degrees, you really need to plant more trees and shrubs. “But then you have to be willing to sacrifice a few parking spaces.”