Regenerative market garden in Flevoland

The edible heart of Yūgen Forest.

Our regenerative market garden lies at the heart of our nature reserve. Here, people, plants, animals, and soil life work together in an active ecosystem that makes the soil richer every year. What grows here doesn’t just feed our guests, but also the landscape itself.

The harvest is used in the kitchen of Yūgen Forest. Through our weekend market and collaborations with local partners, our food also finds its way to individuals who prefer healthy, regeneratively grown, toxin-free food from PFAS-free soil.

Green vision

Our market garden team works according to the principles of regenerative agriculture, permaculture, and agroecology. This means: enriching instead of depleting. Collaborating instead of fighting. By strengthening biodiversity, a resilient ecosystem is created in which plants, insects, animals, and people support each other.

Dozens of types of vegetables, herbs, and fruits grow in the market garden. We consciously look for flavorful varieties, often heirloom and forgotten species that better suit our way of growing.

Discover the market garden

Would you like a tour of our market garden? You can join us on our monthly open day during the high season (May through November). An inspiring and flavorful walk, where our regenerative farmer takes you past various crops, herbs, and flowers. Along the way, he shares his vision on gardening in harmony with nature: feeding the earth instead of depleting it, the soil as an ally, and letting life flourish, both above and below the ground. You will visit the deep-mulch garden, the no-dig beds, the chicken compost garden, and our greenhouses.

Our farmer speaks with love about his methods, successes, and failures, and answers all your questions while sharing practical tips and personal insights.

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Vegetable boxes

Eat with the rhythm of nature. Every Friday from May 29th to November 27th, packages are ready with fresh seasonal vegetables from our regenerative market garden and food forests. Four to six types per week, sometimes supplemented with herbs, fruit, or a forgotten variety.

The season lasts 27 weeks; you choose a subscription for 20 packages and decide for yourself which Fridays you pick them up. Two sizes and three price levels, so everyone can join according to their means. Prefer to get to know us first? The trial package gives you 4 Fridays in June for €75 incl. VAT.

By eating from our harvest, you support biodiversity and our social goals.

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Volunteers

Our volunteers form the backbone of Yūgen Forest. They help with nature restoration, biodiversity, and creating a place where people and nature strengthen each other. Planting a tree, working in the market garden, cooking with the harvest, technical jobs, support during events. Everyone is welcome. No experience is necessary.

Our regular times are Tuesday and Thursday mornings, plus the monthly nature workdays. From sowing to harvesting, from wood chopping to small repairs, there is always work to be done.

Together we’ll figure out what suits you. The work is meaningful, the atmosphere is good, and we love to eat together from what the landscape gives back to us.

Join us regularly, help out occasionally, or come for a morning to see if it suits you. Anything is possible. Send us an email below to introduce yourself.

Email us about volunteering

Social-community

The market garden of Yūgen Forest is more than just a place where food grows. It is also a place where people can connect with nature and the rhythm of the seasons. Working with the earth brings peace, structure, and a sense of involvement.

That is why we collaborate with social organizations for day activities, reintegration, and learning trajectories. In this way, the market garden contributes not only to biodiversity and healthy, honest food, but also to a community where people are valued and can do meaningful work.

Would you like to know what we can do for you in the social field? Then contact us below. We are happy to help.

Email us about social work

Green internship

Are you studying forest and nature management, regenerative agriculture, agroecology, or another relevant green study? Then we have a dream internship for you! You will work in the market garden and the food forest and support the landscape management of our nature reserve.

You will learn how regenerative agriculture, biodiversity, and ecological design come together in a living landscape.

At the same time, you will gain insight into how a nature reserve can develop into a place where nature restoration, food production, events, retreats, and social community can strengthen each other.

Email us about green internship opportunities

The earth is not a resource, but an ally.

Frequently asked questions about the Market Garden

A regenerative market garden is a form of food cultivation that enriches the soil and biodiversity instead of depleting it. No synthetic pesticides, no artificial fertilizers, no monoculture. The market garden of Yūgen Forest is an edible landscape of 52 hectares in Flevoland that combines multiple cultivation systems: strip cropping, two food forests, an orchard, and a herb garden. We work according to the principles of regenerative agriculture, permaculture, and agroecology: collaborating instead of dominating, enriching instead of depleting. Every season the soil becomes more fertile, and the harvest richer.
Regenerative agriculture goes a step further than organic. Organic means that the cultivation meets fixed rules, especially about what you are not allowed to use (no pesticides, no artificial fertilizers). Regenerative focuses on what you do: actively building up the soil, strengthening biodiversity, restoring ecosystems. Our market garden is not SKAL-certified organic, but in practice, it goes further. We don’t measure our work by a quality mark, but by the health of the ground, the soil life, and the landscape that becomes richer every year.
Yes, the market garden of Yūgen Forest is on PFAS-free soil, a rarity in the Netherlands since soil contamination has been widely mapped. Our 52 hectares are located on a young piece of polder land, once a sandbank in the Zuiderzee, which has not suffered industrial pollution due to the relative birth date of the land. For what grows here and what comes to the table, that means: food without the chemical burden that is becoming increasingly concerning elsewhere.
The market garden of Yūgen Forest is not a separate vegetable garden, but an edible landscape that brings together different cultivation systems: strip cropping, two food forests, an orchard, and a herb garden. Strip cropping means that different crops grow in alternating strips next to each other, which suppresses pests and keeps the soil healthy. The orchard provides apples, pears, plums, and cherries. The herb garden gives seasonal flavor to the kitchen and the fermentations. Our own chicken compost garden closes the loop: all organic waste from the kitchens and gardens on the nature estate is converted by the chickens into compost that flows back to the cultivation beds. Together they form an ecosystem that feeds itself, instead of a production line that needs continuous input.
A food forest is a multi-layered agroforestry system in which trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants together form a food-producing ecosystem, comparable to a natural forest. Yūgen Forest has two. The first food forest was designed in 2015 and 2016 by Wouter van Eck and Malika Cieremans and planted on an existing forest plot using the analog forestry method. Wouter van Eck is the pioneer behind Food Forest Ketelbroek in Groesbeek, the most influential food forest in the Netherlands. The second food forest at Yūgen Forest, under development since 2025, works according to a syntropic principle: fast-growing plants like willows and comfrey build up the soil, while fruit, nut, and nectar trees mature around them. One plant species feeds the other. No external input, an abundant edible landscape that sustains itself.

The Market Garden

Rich and pure.