From waste land to wonderful experience garden thanks to Technics

The project regarding experience gardens started in 2019. With the experience gardens, we want to involve customers and the neighbourhood more in the store: OKay is a local shop for good reason. We open up the garden to associations and use it to organise information moments. For example, last year locals were able to follow a training course on how to start an experience garden as an individual.

How did we start our experience gardens? Benny Van Gelder, landscape architect at Technics: "We have about 30 sites with pieces of land we are not allowed or able to use to expand the store or car park. In many cases, they're pastures that have no use - except for being mowed 3 times a year. Early 2020, the store in Rotselaar was the first we tackled. After that, Zingem and Desselgem followed.

How do you design an experience garden? "Each site is different and this shows in the design as well. We look at the surroundings and choose which trees and plants to use based on that. For example, are we dealing with dry or wet soil, how is the acidity, is it a sandy soil or loamy soil, does it contain enough nutrients, etc."

And that's not all. "Each municipality in Flemish Brabant has its foster neighbours: species the municipality makes extra efforts for. In Rotselaar, the brown hairstreak is one of those foster neighbours. The blackthorn in our experience garden is the ideal spot for the orange butterflies to lay their eggs."

Even on sites that won't have an experience garden, we gear our green plan to the surroundings. In Oud-Heverlee, we are currently examining whether we can provide nesting sites for the swallows that live there in large numbers. With such initiatives, we contribute where possible to support all our neighbours - people and animals.