04bis. Le Jardin Patchwork

Annelies DIJKMAN, visual artist, garden designer and gardener, and Lau HEEMSKERK, gardener, garden designer and perennial plant grower

 

 

Annelies Dijkman is a visual artist, garden designer and gardener from the Netherlands. She is specialized in creating site-specific artworks. Her artworks are mainly made for public space, like a cemetery, a residential area or a school. Trees and plants are often part of her works and sometimes a garden itself is the artwork. She is particularly inspired by the meaning that nature, landscape, trees and plants hold for people and their environment. For one person an apple tree is mainly an object of use because of the fruit that it produces, while another sees the tree's blossom in spring and the beauty of its form. This cultural layer is reflected in the artworks she produces. The garden as a cultural space has always had her special interest and she has realized several gardens over the years. To learn more about the art of gardening and plants, she finished a training in gardening. She works regularly in a schoolgarden with children that have behavioural problems. Due to this experience, she sees the garden not only as a cultural and artistic space, but also as a place for mental and physical health.

Lau Heemskerk is a gardener, garden designer and grower of perennials from the Netherlands. She was born in Hong Kong and raised in the Netherlands and Germany. After graduating at the horticultural school, she went on to study dendrology to become a better grower. In the area where she lives, near Amsterdam, several of her designs to improve public green space have been realised. Other realised designs are for private gardens. She participates in nature and environmental education for children and is active in nature-related community work. Her interest in growing and gardening arose after spending time in beautiful rural Vinkeveen in her youth, following a move from busy concrete Hong Kong to the old centre of Amsterdam. This made her a passionate gardener who experiments with compositions in edible plants while always respecting the environment and sustainability.