Sabine Bolk: Hill of beans - End project during Harvest Fest

'Hill of beans'-carpet

After selecting, sowing, watching the beans grow and harvesting, it was time to reap what I sowed.

Early morning, at 8, I arrived at De Kapeltuin. It was cold, but the Sun was shining. In my corner under the Sweet Chestnut I started preparing myself and the ground. With the spider spinning her web that week in front of my window in mind, I started laying the beans.

Beans are bigger and therefor you can make a bigger carpet, but because you have to lay each single bean (rice you can sprinkle) it takes more time.

I never worked with just beans, and my plan was to use all seed-saved beans in the carpet. The other beans I used to make jewelry and little packets for dried beans to eat.

Making the carpet, photo by Marlies Hermans

After two hours making my beancarpet was complete. Small, but with every bean used and with an interesting end-form. Somewhere between a spiderweb, sunflower and wind-rose.

In my plot and the rest of De Kapeltuin I made a photo-exhibition. I made little booklets of the transformation of my 'Hill of beans' plot and my (Instagram) beanfies. On my 'bicycle-wheel-on-stake' were pictures of how the bicycle wheel got overgrown by the Runner beans. So between the last ripening pods, the visitors could see the growing of the beans.

In the garden I extended the exhibition I made during the Kunstroute Haagse Beemden. Photos of the history, the oldest from beginning 1900, the most recent from a few weeks before, were placed in the garden where they could be viewed with the same location today in one frame.

These historical pictures together with the pieces of history every visitor got when they took a bean (or packet or earring) from my carpet, told the whole story of De Kapeltuin. The little pieces of history had on one side a date in time with a little information and on the other side information about beans like the beans I used for my project and favorite bean-recipes of Kapeltuin-volunteers.

The bean in this way was not only a bean to sow or eat (or wear), but a bean that hold a part of history of the place were it was harvest, and everyone together, the whole carpet, told the whole story. So in this way you learn more by sharing. Which for me was a key part of the story of De Kapeltuin. A rough grassland in time turned into a community garden by a group of volunteers in which sharing is the main goal. Not only sharing of harvest, but of a place to enjoy, together or alone by everyone in the neighborhood.