Most offsites include nature as a view. A window with greenery, a plant in the corner, a walk during the lunch break. The day itself takes place indoors.
It can be different. If you are looking for an offsite location with an overnight stay where nature participates instead of just watching, the character of the day changes. It’s not the room that determines the rhythm, but the land, the season, and the pace of the outdoors.
Yūgen Forest is an event and retreat location in a 52-hectare regenerative nature reserve near Dronten, in Flevoland. We are the place, not the program maker. What happens here during an offsite arises from the combination of your agenda and our environment.
Nature as a participant
The land participates, for real.
An offsite in the nature reserve uses the environment as an active participant. You don’t do a reflection task inside at a table, but outside, under a tree. A silent walk isn’t on the margins of the program, but right in the middle of it.
This becomes most apparent during the tour of our regenerative market garden. We show how you build a system that gives back more than it takes: soil that becomes richer year after year, species that strengthen each other, a harvest that follows from patience. You don’t need to explain the parallel with an organization. Teams draw it themselves.
Research supports what we see in practice. A walk in a natural environment restores directed attention measurably better than the same walk in an urban environment (Berman, Jonides, and Kaplan, 2008). A team that sits inside all day exhausts exactly that attention. Outside, it replenishes.
What a multi-day offsite adds
The depth after landing.
A single day brings you to the first insight. The depth comes after. That’s why an offsite location with an overnight stay is the difference for many teams between a good session and a day that sticks.
Those who stay overnight don’t have to switch off at five o’clock. The conversation continues, even after dinner. The evening becomes still, the night breathes peace, and the morning begins right where you left off. Here, you sleep in nature, not in a hotel along the highway. Ten off-grid cabins with wood-burning stoves are open all year round, twenty glamping tents among the fruit trees from May through September, plus a tiny house. Each spot is furnished for two people. In the summer, a group of up to sixty people can sleep on-site, and in the winter, up to twenty. See sleeping and overnight stays for the locations.
You feel that difference on the second day, in the tone of the conversation and in what a group dares to do. The insights from day one have had a night to sink in.
The Slot, the Greenhouse, and a dinner from the land
Space that does the work.
Two locations host most of the offsites. Slot Roggebot is situated at the edge of the forest, overlooking the flower meadows and the orchard. Versatile and idiosyncratic, it is a space that adapts to your day rather than the other way around. The Slot is open year-round for groups up to 50 people: an intimate tower room with a skylight, a living room with a fireplace, a back room for retreating, and a loft as a breakout space. Wi-Fi is standard here, so hybrid sessions are easily possible.
In the Greenhouse, the daylight is enchanting during the day, and the candlelight even more so in the evening. Among the grapevines, a session feels less like a meeting and more like simply being somewhere. The nineteenth-century grape conservatory is open from April through October for groups up to 120 people. The space does part of the work before the program even begins.
If you want to take the entire session outdoors, there is the Forest Room. Two stretch tents under the canopy, fire pits that invite togetherness, and an adjacent open field for active work formats. Available from May to September, for 15 to 120 people.
What comes to the table comes from the land you walk on. Our kitchen is vegetarian and follows the season, prepared from our own harvest. Food connects, with each other and with the place. It feeds body and mind, and it is not an afterthought in the day but a part of it.
Just over an hour from the Randstad, yet far away
Close enough, far enough.
Dronten is closer than most teams think. From Amersfoort, you drive to the nature reserve in 55 minutes, from Amsterdam in 1 hour 4 minutes, and from Utrecht in 1 hour 7 minutes. From Zwolle, you can be there in half an hour.
That hour does something. On the way, a team leaves the office agenda behind. Upon arrival, you park at the Vossemeerdijk and walk into the forest. Far enough to break free, close enough to be back home after a day, or to drive back refreshed after two days.
You bring the program, we provide the place
Your own control, a supportive environment.
We don’t create offsite programs. You bring your own agenda, your own facilitator, your own questions. We take care of the place, the peace, and everything around it.
Where you want it, we think along about what nature can add. A tour of the market garden. A foraging walk. An active session outside instead of an energizer inside. Not a mandatory item, but an offering that fits what your day needs.
What often arises here:
- Clear conversations
- Ideas that get space
- A connection that reaches further than this day.
An offsite location with an overnight stay in the nature reserve
If you are looking for an offsite location with an overnight stay in a nature reserve, we would love to look at what fits: the number of people, the spaces, the overnight stay, and the rhythm of the days. The entire place can be rented exclusively on request, so your group has the nature reserve to themselves for a while.
Schedule an exploratory call. We’d love to think along with you.
