Sam garden 'Van Gogh' moves

Good news! The Samentuin 'Van Gogh' can be found at a new location from spring 2023, namely on a piece of land behind the Lambertus Church on the Lambertusstraat. The Lambertus Church is one of the five Van Gogh Monuments Etten-Leur. The opening of the garden is scheduled for Friday, March 10.

This brings an end to the search of Wijkbelang Centrum Oost for a new location. The location on the corner Anna van Berchemlaan / Lambertusstraat is abandoned due to the new construction plans of landowner Amarant on that spot.

In 2014, the Sam garden Van Gogh was launched.

Mush and school garden
Neighborhood residents have been working with children in the public purse and school garden ever since. All sorts of things came into it. An insect hotel, flower picking garden, vegetable gardens and a small orchard with apple and pear trees. With this Samentuin Van Gogh, the neighborhood mainly wants to achieve that local residents meet each other, children learn from the elderly and that the garden contributes to the atmosphere and togetherness in the neighborhood. Every year there is a joint neighborhood lunch for neighborhood residents and the school children of IKC De Vincent who have worked in the Sam garden throughout the season. Learning about and from nature and each other is what this beautiful neighborhood project is all about.

And so from spring 2023, all that will happen in a new place. It will also be slightly larger than the previous location. Volunteers are currently hard at work shaping the Samentuin Van Gogh. "Because of the somewhat limited light, it is not entirely ideal, but we are happy to be able to work in this spot and welcome children again," says coordinator Hilvert Boelmans. "For the schoolchildren, fortunately little will change, as we will remain close by."

Van Gogh
Van Gogh's love of the outdoors did not come out of the blue. In his youth he made long walks from his native village of Zundert along fields and through forests. It was in the Brabant countryside that his lifelong love of nature was born, and it is no wonder that Vincent's art also became inextricably linked to it. Nowhere else did he find so much inspiration, comfort and peace as outdoors.
We know a lot about Vincent, especially from the letters to his brother Theo. The latter received the following advice from Vincent as early as 1874:
'Always keep walking a lot & loving nature a lot, because that is the true way to learn to understand art more & more.'

Vincent felt that as an artist you really had to know and understand nature, "It is not the language of painters so much as the language of nature that one must listen to.

In 1882, shortly after Van Gogh left Etten, he wrote to Theo: '...if I had no love for nature and my work - I would be unhappy.'