The Fruit Gardens of West in Amsterdam

culinaire expeditie06/15/2021

For this month's Culinary Expedition, we ventured deep into Amsterdam-West, near Halfweg. There you will find the Fruittuinen van West, an initiative by Wil and Lisan Sturkenboom who sold their biodynamic orchard in Dronten to realize their dream business in Amsterdam in 2014. What should that dream business look like? A place with a great diversity of business branches that are all interconnected, where consumers from the city and the countryside would come together.

They planted the first tree in March 2014. Since then, the Fruittuinen van West has grown into a huge paradise of raspberry and blackberry bushes, apple, pear, cherry trees, and berry bushes. You will also find grapes, cranberries, nectarines, and strawberries. Visitors can pick, weigh, and pay themselves. Even in winter, you can pick here, in the chicory 'cave' or the shiitake greenhouses. Chickens roam everywhere, whose eggs you are also allowed to collect.

Striving for sustainability
Circular entrepreneurship is an important concept within that business operation. By connecting processes and environment, you strengthen the whole, is the idea.

They strive for sustainability, respect for nature, healthy eating, and attention to people - including those with disabilities or a distance to the labor market. Wil and Lisan have also

started a restaurant where all products are organically certified. We enjoy a now so trendy 'slow coffee' at the Garden Café, coffee just like we make at home: with a French press. A piece of apple pie on the side, of course made from the apples from the orchard.

After our coffee break, we continue shopping in the organic store. The products sold here come as much as possible from the local region. You can buy delicious cheeses, bread, and all kinds of vegetables. They also sell organic flours, sandwich spreads, household products, soups, cookies, chips, and much more.

Green oasis near the city
The Fruit Garden of West is a wonderful place in the green, an oasis close to the city. They are open six days a week from 10:30 to 18:00 (closed on Monday). It is handy to check the website in advance to see which fruit can be picked at that moment. The Fruit Gardens are part of the Gardens of West: a green area of 700 hectares, between the built-up area of the Nieuw-West district and Halfweg, consisting of four polders.

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