DIGITAL MIRROR: To what is left rootbound in emptied ground

Half an hour later, I stumble outside, trailing my cup of coffee. Frogs are flirting in the pond of a French garden located directly opposite the building's entrance. The heavy, velvety backsides of bumblebees land on the purple spikes of salvias. Every little flower is a seesaw-seat. Stems bend briefly, then spring back when the bees drone off. Everything moves freely here. But about five generations ago, this outdoor space was reined in and regimented. Inspired by the gardens of a Sun King, it was designed to entertain visitors and project power and prestige. Mastery over nature as a metaphor for mastery itself. In a yearbook from 1918, I find a black-and-white photograph of what is now the purple garden. Above monochrome blossoms, pruned into unnatural spheres, tufts of different plant species erupt to give the impression of a forced giant flower vase. A giant, coerced bouquet. The lawn is trimmed so precisely that the edges almost look synthetic. The imposition of a shape onto something that doesn't naturally take it makes me uneasy.

Floating on canal water in a white-red rowing boat, playing among thistles and drawbridges, I spent my childhood on “wastelands” that had been pushed side. Wild grounds that had to disappear to make way for linear villages, fields, and canals through which the fruits from that soil could be shipped to the cities. Sometimes, when I drive my aging blue bumper car across my native soil, I wonder if I could still retrace the inhospitable wilderness, that was greedily and thoroughly conquered, somewhere between the cracks in the asphalt. The drained, reclaimed soil was stripped of its peat, which was then dried and charred to ash in our stoves. Once the land had nothing left to give, we made it fertile and filled it with angular, arable fields. Little remains of the swamps. People only came here to erase it.

As part of New Deal plans in America, the swamp and its marginalized inhabitants were portrayed as 'unwanted' and 'uncivilized' to legitimize the profitable exploitation of these grounds. Yet, this wild land offered more safety than the cultivated land and the racism that shaped it. Amidst the marshland, escaped enslaved people built collectives beyond the reach of colonial powers. But this process of 'marronage' was forcibly taken from them: 'swampification' reshaped the areas in word and image as hotbeds of death and decay. Governments, organizations, and the press declared the marshy refuges to be cursed voids, forcefully justifying their complete destruction. When I scroll through documents from the Horticultural School, I encounter traces of Dutch participation. In one of the green-bound yearbooks, a former student writes about his work visit to America: 

Sundry matters do I wish here briefly to impart, how utterly wild grounds may be brought under cultivation and how vast orchards with oranges, figs, olives, date palms, or with other fruit trees do arise. (...) The new tract of land, but lately acquired from the government as “a new claim” is taken in hand, reclaimed, sown with cotton, lucerne or other crops, whilst the already reclaimed territories are bettered.

An unsurprising matter-of-factness radiates from the pages. The idea of bringing both land and people “under cultivation” to “improve” them echoes through the history of Frederiksoord, where the Horticultural School was established in 1884. Two generations before this, governor-general of the Dutch East Indies Johannes van den Bosch saw no issue with erasing the wilderness. The Drenthe terrain was a cost-effective location for his experiment in domestic colonization: “De Koloniën van Weldadigheid” (The Colonies of Benevolence, trans.), through which he sought to tackle poverty by providing the poor with employment. The potential spread of poverty and the associated “vice” or “laziness” was seen as a threat to public order in wake of the recent French Revolution. Entire families of paupers and beggars from the big cities were selected and sent to the colonies where they were to be be shaped into full-fledged governable citizens, and the wild soil into agricultural land. They were met with a prepared “home” with a small plot of land, a cow and a sheep, where the combination of hard labor and possessions was meant to make them “self-sufficient”. But there was a yearning for profitable surplus: the goal was to teach colonists to produce beyond self-sufficiency. Paupers ended up in a strictly managed community of forced labor, in which medals, status and “spare time” were distributed based on “good behavior” and work performance.

For this, Van den Bosch drew inspiration from his experience with the collective organization of labor in Java. He had land cultivated and achieved considerable profits by forcing supposedly “lazy” people to work within a closed community. According to him, these workers had previously been wasting their time and still needed to be “taught how to work.” Although the brutal reality of the overseas plantation system contrasts with the relatively mild form of domestic colonization in the Netherlands, both are rooted in the same imperial system. The entire infrastructure for the disciplinary system in the Drenthe settlements was aligned with the practiced colonial model. Straight, orderly lines, controlled labor and housing layouts that reflect the hierarchy seamlessly connect to the plantation model, for which the seemingly useless marshes were transformed into agricultural land. This model converts 'emptiness' into property that can be owned. An “elevating” institution, aimed at controlling both people, and the landscape, which was deemed wild.

Such an isolated community, built on military discipline and panoptic surveillance, shapes its inhabitants. It carves deep neurological pathways in the form of attitudes, beliefs and inescapable stigmas. The environment leaves physical and psychological traces, feeding into a collective memory, passing worldviews and ways of thinking onto the next generations. Oppression becomes a hereditary brand, bound to a place on the social and geographical map.

Before I can wonder what I inherited from my parents, I notice a tick making its way across my keyboard. In a panicked attempt to crush the parasite, I slam my laptop shut. Once I'm certain I don't have to share any of my my blood, I glance into the backyard of the old school building. Trees bend and twist under the weight of their own branches. Cleavers and horsetail pull themselves up on the grass. Van den Bosch didn’t want that wildness. He created a human French garden and hoped it would learn to grow after his example. But it doesn’t. Left alone, it escapes its borders and flees the shadows in search of light. I think of the gardens before the volunteers arrived: the overgrown walking paths, the greenhouses filled floor to ceiling with brambles. There is justice in reclaiming space, even when it bears no fruit.

Today, young growth lines the lanes, once again reconnected to the colony’s road layout. When they guide me to the arboretum, I catch a fixed stare from behind the foxglove. A blackbird drops its work and fleetingly darts off. It knows no history, only an instinct honed by generations of experience. Fear doesn't attach itself to words. It creeps into the body and recognizes repetition. I notice a chattering exchange between the leaves of thetree tops. A memory rustles through the foliage of immobile plants. I direct my gaze to the greenhouses, adorned with rows of pear trees. The oldest espalier pear avenue in the Netherlands was planted by sons of colonists. Beneath me the roots of memories grow older than the yearbooks. I find them difficult to read. Epigenetic knowledge is silently shared with descendants, sprouting from the sandy soil through an invisible archive. They adapt without a sound. From a stone seat along the pear avenue, the trees seem to stand next to each other like starfish - their guided branches like outstretched arms. All I can see is people. In this curated constellation of plants and persons for the benefit of capital, humans and non-humans ended up in places where they don't naturally belong. Contorted into forms they did not naturally have, forced into unnatural proximity - brought together not out of will, but out of necessity. In hopes that every grain may yield its highest return.

BIBLIOGRAFIE

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Maarten, Zwiers. “Foreword: Swamp Manifesto: Manifestations of the Swamp.” Soapbox Journal for Cultural Analysis, no. 5 (2024): 21–37. 

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FURTHER READING 

Bhabha, Homi. 1990. "The Other Question: Difference, Discrimination, and the Dis-

course of Colonialism." In Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures,

Russell Ferguson, et al., eds. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Ecologisch Adviesbureau Maes in opdracht van de provincie Drenthe. De betekenis en ouderdom van de beplanting in de Koloniën van Weldadigheid, Oktober 2016. 

Jaarboekje Der Vereeniging van Oud-Leerlingen Der Gerard Adriaan van Swieten Tuinbouwschool Te Frederiksoord Voor 1915. Frederiksoord: G.A. van Swieten Tuinbouwschool, 1915.

Jaarboekje Der Vereeniging van Oud-Leerlingen Der Gerard Adriaan van Swieten Tuinbouwschool Te Frederiksoord Voor 1917. Frederiksoord: G.A. van Swieten Tuinbouwschool, 1917. 

Jaarboekje Der Vereeniging van Oud-Leerlingen Der Gerard Adriaan van Swieten Tuinbouwschool Te Frederiksoord Voor 1918. Frederiksoord: G.A. van Swieten Tuinbouwschool, 1918. 

Jong, Erik A. de, and Laurie Cluitmans. “Foreword: Like a Mirror.” Essay. In On the Necessity of Gardening: An ABC of Art, Botany and Cultivation. Amsterdam, Nederland: Valiz, 2021. 

Tori DeAngelis. “The Legacy of Trauma.” APA.org, februari 2019. https://www.apa.org.