News arrived: 2025 is the last year for Gesamthof. We knew this location was temporary before we started to garden and it was still worth it, but now the time has come to end this beautiful garden. With the support of morpho vzw and Extra City kunsthal we invite the queer community to relocate plants to safer areas.
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| The trans & lesbian garden in 2024 |
We see this as an opportunity to get together and garden. In the trans & lesbian garden we grow minorities: plants and insects that are part of the ecology of Borgerhout. The wild plants growing now in Gesamthof will be potted and shared for a better future. This way the garden can live on in many other gardens. Please join us on these dates:
January 26: winter is ideal to move trees and shrubs: Hawthorn, Dog roses, Ferns, Beech, Rowan...
February 23: the last of the trees and shrubs need to go, and we can start to dig up early flowers: Snowdrops, Hellebore, Violets, wild garlic, forget-me-not... early winter flowering plants.
March 30: lots of spring flowers will have appeared by now, little Dog violets, lesser Celandine, Crocus, and also early summer flowers appear above ground: Salomon's seal, broad-leaved enchanter's nightshade, Clematis old man's beard, Alchemilla Xantochlora, Paris, Anchusa, Comfry...
April 27: summer plants are not yet flowering, let's move them into new gardens: galium verum, ragwort, digitalis, Libertia, Schizostylis coccinea, Thalictrum, and the little pools with waterplants, snails and dragonfly offspring. (in a way we're lucky there are no frogs or newts living in this garden)
May 25: the last of the summer plants are to go, as summer is not ideal to move plants. We take a summer break to return in autumn.
September 28: late summer, the very last plants, who have not found a new home by now, can be potted up and given away.
October 26: this is the last queer Sunday gardening, join us for the last plants, the last shrubs and trees that couldn't be moved before because their roots were covered with plants, bits and bobs, garden materials, reusable labels, pieces of string, a lucky charm, a souvenir...
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| The Gesamthof in autumn 2024 |
Practical:
Entrance is via Extra City, Provinciestraat 112, 2018 Antwerp https://extracitykunsthal.org/
Queer gardening sessions are from 14 - 18h, with a garden tour at 15h (about 45 minutes) to highlight the plants growing in this season.
The queer gardening afternoon is free, the garden tour and the plants are also free, but Extra City asks an entrance fee (you can see their nice exhibitions). Check their calendar / website for more info.
When the bar at Extra city is closed tea is provided at the gardening table.
Unfortunately the garden is only accessible via a small staircase (6 steps) and not wheelchair friendly.
We'll garden in all kinds of weather.
Contact: for more information please contact me at elinewoolpublishing (at) gmail.com
The Gesamthof garden has a contemporary gardener's approach to language: we use porous words, inclusive semantics like patches of rhizomes, we like to communicate collective practices, and our definitions have open, frayed edges. Nature's playful approach to gender and sexuality is reflected in our language and practices. This garden supports minorities, both plants and animals, including humans. This project started as Gesamthof, evolved to lesbian garden and includes trans people. The words are highlighting practices, not exluding others. In reality we welcome all kinds of species, and use gardening to practice decolonial thinking. With decolonialism we express 'to give back the land to whom belongs with this land' in ecology this includes a wide variety of species. It also requests good care & response-ability towards nature and land practices.
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| Not all the plants are wild, this is a hybrid Epidemium. |
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| The wild plants like some in this photo, are extremely valuable for wild life, interacting with butterflies, caterpillars, moths, bats, birds etc. This garden needs almost no care, wild plants can look after themselves, all year round. |
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| Garlic mustard, here gray at the end of the season, is a larvae food plant for some very nice butterflies, it will self seed throughout the garden at the edge of hedges. |
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| The Scrophularia auriculata or shoreline figwort, is in symbiosis with wasps and when this plant grows in your garden the attracted wasps will keep the aphid population under control. |
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| Some of the plants are extremely poisonous for human animals, if you have children who would put plants in their mouth you might want to check before bringing these to your garden. |
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| Some plants, like this wild garlic (daslook) are edible and will give you something exciting to taste. |
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| Our plants come from lots of different places, if we still have the label you can take it with you. |
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| We'll also help to determine what kind of soil type / light preferences might work. |
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| Some of the plants in the garden arrived on their own, they are loved and cared for just as for the others, because they are living within the local ecology and support many species. |
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| Some of the plants are very old, like this 20 year old fern who has moved from studio to studio with me, and now is no longer willing to be grown in a pot any more. |
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| The intricate connections between the plants make this garden unique, but new connections can be made, and we hope this garden will live on, beloved by the queer community & friends. |
