Columnist and writer Gerbrand Bakker wrote a column for the weekly magazine De Groene Amsterdammer in 2009 about his childhood memory of the Le Roy Garden.
My father once employed a Frisian farmhand. When he quit, he moved back to Friesland, to Heerenveen, with his wife and children. I found it very strange that he returned every spring to look for lapwing eggs, because surely that was a typically Frisian activity? After they moved, we would occasionally head that way. I have no image whatsoever of a house or a street in Heerenveen where I can place the farmhand and his wife. I do remember a magical walking path, however, that must have been located near the house. It wasn't just a straight path of paving stones or asphalt with a few bushes along the side. It was a winding path, with nooks and crannies and strange large chunks of stone, steps, half-collapsed walls, and sleeper walls. The vegetation was tunnel-like, with hogweed and other weeds everywhere. You didn't see anything like that in our barren polder. I must have been there perhaps three times.
I have never been to Louis le Roy's Ecocathedral in Mildam (municipality of Heerenveen), but I know the concept, have seen images, and heard garden designers speak about it. Secretly, I dream of starting something like that myself someday, on a piece of land that belongs to me, although, unlike Le Roy, I definitely picture a saw, pruning shears, and a brush cutter there. I find keeping things under control a bit more important than he does.
Hundred-year contract
The winter issue of *Onze Eigen Tuin* contained an article about Le Roy, and only then did I learn that the magical path in the median strip of the Kennedylaan was one of the first Le Roy projects. Without ever having heard of the man, I was already captivated by his vision as a young boy. Those are the moments when you realize that you don't just do things haphazardly later in life. In 2005, almost forty years after the start of the ecocathedral project, a hundred-year contract was signed between the Municipality of Heerenveen and Le Roy. That is wonderful, because time – or rather: 'processes without an end goal' – is of the utmost importance in his vision.
Published in De Groene Amsterdammer no. 21, May 21, 2009
