AMSTERDAM TEAM
ANN DOHERTY
Amsterdam Coordinator
Stadsboerderij Osdorp, Pluk! CSA founder, Workshops, Garden Consultations, Tours & Outings
Ann is an agroecologist, urban farmer, educator, beekeeper and worm composter. She studied urban agriculture at the University of Guelph) and at Warmonderhof in the Netherlands, and has a Permaculture Design Certificate from Linder van den Heerik. She was the communications coordinator for the global environmental federation Friends of the Earth International for 16 years before she decided to take the leap into urban agriculture in 2011. In 2017, she co-initiated Pluk!, a self-harvest Community Supported Agriculture farm in Amsterdam that will feed more than 225 families in 2024. In 2023, she took over the coordination of the Stadsboerderij Osdorp garden. She also teaches and coordinates a garden with the women’s empowerment gardening organisation Bloei & Groei and is the community builder at the Amsterdam composting project Afval naar Oogst. Originally from New England, she has lived and gardened in Amsterdam for three decades. She brings a love of coordination and bringing people together to the Cityplot team.
Contact Ann: ann@cityplot.org
PAUL VLUGMAN
Amsterdam Team
Children
Paul was born in a village in the south of the Netherlands (also home to the country’s largest food forest). He played and ran through the fields during his childhood and has never stopped since. One of his primary school teachers involved him in a native garden next to the school and a seed was planted in his soul. After many travels and adventures Paul has settled in Amsterdam, but he continues to engage in his passion for green and the outdoors.
Paul studied education, and has worked with children for many years in every neighbourhood of the city. In addition, he is passionate aboutfood and cooking; he attended cooking school at a young age and worked as a chef. Via that route he got involved in urban farming and forestry projects around Amsterdam. He also loves to build outdoors, and is a member of Saunakaravaan, a community of mobile sauna lovers. He loves how Cityplot unites children with nature so that they can grow, nourish, harvest and prepare food together.
Contact: paul@cityplot.org
ELISKA JANSEN
Amsterdam Team
Pluk! CSA
When Eliska read a book on a beach in Sicily about a woman starting a garden in the middle of Dublin, she knew she wanted to know more about growing vegetables. So, in the middle of the pandemic, she followed an online course. Cityplot’s Ann Doherty gave the course, and Eliska became more and more enthusiastic about growing food organically. When she first visited Pluk! at the Fruittuin van West, she knew that this is what she wanted to do in life! Soon after, she became a volunteer and started studying at the Warmonderhof school for biodynamic farming in 2021. There was no question that she wanted to do her internship at Pluk! Before she knew it, she was part of this beautiful community and never wants to leave. These days, she is finishing her studies at Warmonderhof and has started as a farmer at the Boterbloem.
Contact: eliska@cityplot.org
GEN OSBORNE
Amsterdam Team
Pluk! CSA
After a long career in contemporary arts, Genevieve made the leap to join Cityplot’s Pluk! CSA farming team in 2022. Many years before, her search for better food production within Amsterdam was what led her to enroll in one of Ann Doherty’s inspiring urban growing workshops via Cityplot. Having a deeper understanding of the nourishing world at our feet fast became a passion, and after several years of involvement in local green projects she joined the Pluk! farming team. Gen currently combines working at Pluk! with regenerative farming studies, with a focus on no-dig farming.
Contact: gen@cityplot.org
AMY LIU
Amsterdam Team
Workshops & Events, Restaurants, Garden Consultations
Amy loves plants, bees and art. Moving from China to San Francisco and then Amsterdam, she used to focus on her career in tech. A few years ago she realized her day job was unfulfilling and wanted to find another way to make a difference. She explored different activities, including taking the Get Down, Get Dirty course from Cityplot and found joy in working with plants and the ecosystem around them. What started with a few indoor plants then expanded to a balcony with peppers and tomatoes. Wanting to grow and explore further, she transformed a backyard of tiles into a year-round fruit and vegetable garden. In parallel, she trained in natural beekeeping and now maintains her own hive. She wants to share her knowledge to help more people discover the joys of growing their own food, the beauty of working and connecting with nature, and sustainable living.
Contact Amy: amy@cityplot.org
HIEKE VAN DER HOOGTE
Amsterdam Team
Pluk! CSA
Hieke has been with Cityplot as a workshop attendee, a Pluk! harvester, a volunteer and an intern before joining the team of farmers in CSA Pluk! She was educated at the Warmonderhof biodynamic farming school, and during the course she started the second Pluk! farm at the Boterbloem location where she is still part of the team. She loves working together with volunteers and interns, and likes to talk about crops and why we choose small-scale local farming. She is also involved in what is happening in the Lutkemeerpolder, right next to the Pluk! fields, where healthy soil is being destroyed to build distribution centres.
Contact: hieke@cityplot.org
ALICE ANDERSEN
Amsterdam Team
Workshops & Events, Restaurants, Garden Consultations
Alice is an urban grower, digital producer, and experience designer and is part of the workshops, gardens and tours teams at CityPlot. Some years ago, she read that many of us now recognise more brands than plants, so she set out to get to know more plants than brands! She loves getting her hands dirty and growing vegetables, foraging for wild herbs, and creating more wilderness in the city. She enjoys introducing other city dwellers to the everyday magic that exists below our feet, the joy of growing your own food, and reconnecting with the seasons. She also teaches mindfulness meditation, and has found nature can teach us many things when we’re present.
Contact: alice@cityplot.org
DORIEN MUL
Amsterdam Team
Pluk! CSA
Curious about farming, Dorien went to Sweden to work on small-scale organic farms after her jobs in various social research projects. She learned about growing vegetables, keeping sheep and what a joy it is to work and live on the land with a group of people. Her interest in working towards more local, social and nature-friendly food systems grew, and once back in the Netherlands in 2021 she began her studies at the Warmonderhof. She started her internship at Pluk! and since 2023 is one of the farmers at the Boterbloem location, amidst a wonderful community of fellow farmers, interns, harvesters and volunteers.
Contact: dorien@cityplot.org
NAOMI VERMEULEN
Amsterdam Team
Stadsboerderij Osdorp, Kids, Tours & Outings
Although Naomi was born and raised in Amsterdam, as a child she always felt most at home in the polder where she played in the mud with horses and other animals. After high school, she tried to figure out what she found most important by exploring the world. She encountered themes including sustainability and the current conventional agricultural system and decided to dive deeper into these topics by getting a degree in Future Planet Studies at the University of Amsterdam. During this period she really wanted to put her knowledge into practice and get her hands dirty, so she started working in the community vegetable garden at Stadsboerderij Osdorp. It was here that she came in contact with Cityplot. Naomi’s path has taken her from an interest for urban green spaces to a particular fascination for sustainable agriculture. She loves to mesmerize others with the natural wonders that a city such as Amsterdam has to offer.
Contact: naomi@cityplot.org
EDUARD HERNANDEZ NUALART
Amsterdam Team
Pluk! CSA
Coming from a small-farm family background in the Catalan countryside, Edu studied Environmental Science in Barcelona and has been involved for a long time in community urban gardens and local activist grassroots movements. Edu moved to Amsterdam in 2017 and he has been working on different projects, for example at Greenpeace International and at the Knotwilg Organic Farm. Currently he combines the work at Pluk! with a part-time position at ASEED developing a coordination role campaigning against industrial agriculture.
Contact: eduard@cityplot.org
MAAIKE SOETERMANS
Amsterdam team
Workshops
Amsterdam native Maaike Soetermans has a practice as a holistic dietician and is passionate about natural health. Nutrition in a broad sense always had her interest; from the health benefits, to where it comes from and how it’s been grown. Her love for agriculture was first sparked during a visit to a biodynamic farm when she was getting her bachelor degree in nutrition. Since then, she has volunteered at different permaculture and regenerative farms; in Belgium, California USA and in the Sinai desert of Egypt. In 2022, Maaike finished her Permaculture Design Course and attended Cityplot’s Get Down Get Dirty (GDGD) training. In 2023 she became a Cityplot member and added a nutritional contribution to the GDGD XL series. She also started at Warmonderhof, studying biodynamic farming. and became an intern at Pluk! @ Fruittuin van West. As a dietician, her expertise lies in the gut microbiome. Maaike is absolutely thrilled by the similarities with the soil microbiome - building healthy soil is the foundation for strong plants and thriving humans. She is very excited to contribute to Cityplot by sharing more on the topic of nutrition.
Contact Maaike: maaike@cityplot.com
JASPER RIEHM
Amsterdam Team
Jasper is an innovative culinary artist and urban ecologist who has redefined the intersection of gastronomy and green urban living in Amsterdam. With a foundation in elite culinary arts, honed in the kitchens of globally renowned Michelin-starred restaurants, Jasper transitioned his focus towards sustainable urban agriculture and bio-artistry. Within Cityplot, he champions urban sustainability through engaging foraging tours and the creation of living willow structures, fostering a deeper connection between city residents and their natural environment.
You can follow him on @thatweirdplantguy and his website.
EVA THOMASSEN
Amsterdam Team
Stadsboerderij Osdorp, Kids Team Founder, Garden Consultations, Workshops & Events
Eva is an educator, loves herb gardens and designs and builds edible gardens. She is also an artist and works as a pen & ink illustrator.
Born in Amsterdam she lived in Barcelona and London for 12 years, enjoying big city life, working in fashion and film. She returned to Amsterdam to study art and started surfing. Through her love for surfing, she rediscovered a long forgotten love for the outdoors and as her practices in art & yoga developed she started taking more of an interest in the provenance of food as well as sustainability.
After meeting the Cityplot collective on a children's refugee project she was drawn in, and formally joined the collective in 2018. She ran the biketour team, got a Permaculture Design Certificate and was part of the initial Kids team, greening schoolyards with edible gardens and weekly lessons.
Since then she has stayed active in the Kids team, teaching the next generation about growing food in more schools, worked on several community projects at the Stadsboerderij Osdorp, and now coordinates the herb garden there. She also enjoys giving workshops and organising events for adults and gets into garden design & maintenance. You might still catch her giving a few urban farming bike tours each year.
Contact Eva: eva@cityplot.org
MARYE CHERRY
Amsterdam Team
Marye is a garden coach and budding urban farmer. The farm-to-table movement is in her roots. She spent the summers of her youth in rural Georgia next to her grandmother, stringing green beans, canning peaches and frying green tomatoes out of her Granny’s backyard. She began her horticulture career with Cityplot trainings, including the course Get Down, Get Dirty.
As a member of the Cityplot collective, Marye focuses on sustainability from the ground up—providing children’s education, season-long gardening courses and workshops, as well as garden consultations. She has a particular interest in "hyper-local" urban agriculture, participating in several community gardens and helping convert the neighborhood schoolyard into a sustainable green space.
Marye earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Old Dominion University and a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center.
Contact: marye@cityplot.org
MARIE-JOSÉ VAN SCHAIK
Amsterdam Team
Pluk! CSA
Marie-José has just finished her studies at the Warmonderhof and is very happy that she can work with Pluk! to create a wonderful place together and grow beautiful vegetables in a sustainable way. It's great to be outside, enjoying the carrots that are coming up, the spoonbill that flies over, the cabbages that look lovely in a freshly weeded bed, and wondering what kind of beautiful beetle is walking around.
She lives in Landsmeer, together with her partner Gijs and daughters Milou and Amber.
MARIJN VAN DER KLEIJ
Amsterdam team
Kids team, workshops
Marijn has been interested in every aspect of nature since a young age. His house is a home for many types of plants and animals. Learning how ecosystems function and all the life that keeps it in balance is his biggest passion. The tiny roof garden is just as interesting as a huge forest for him. After travelling around the world and studying applied biology, he realised that teaching and sharing this love for nature was his main goal. While working at the Fruittuin van West, he got in contact with Cityplot and has been teaching nature and garden education ever since.
Contact: marijn@cityplot.org
BERLIN TEAM
LEONIE WOIDT-WALLISSER
Berlin Coordinator
Workshops, Gardens, Garden Consultations & Permaculture Planning
Leonie has a background in architecture, the fine arts and permaculture. Since having left her family’s off-grid homestead and extensive garden in small-town South Australia, she has lived amongst the urban populations of Australia, Germany, the US and the Netherlands. Her theoretical research in restoration ecology in the cultural sector, undertaken as part of studies at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, triggered her to initiate Cityplot in 2007. She co-coordinates the workshop programme and gardens in Berlin.
Leonie has many years of experience teaching and consulting in multiple facets of permaculture: food growing systems; community building and social systems; architecture, urban and landscape planning; natural building and construction with upcycled materials; nature connections and spiritual ecology; holistic and regenerative practices on all levels; and beyond. Life coming full-cycle, step-by-step she nears a self-sufficient lifestyle and delves ever deeper into the worlds of ethnobotany and deep ecology.
Leonie strongly believes that there is not a problem, which cannot be solved through tapping into the heartbeat of the Earth - and that even the smallest of garden plots will help get you there!
Contact Leonie: leonie@cityplot.org
BARCELONA TEAM
JÚLIA SOLER
Barcelona Team
Workshops & Garden consultations
Born in Barcelona, Júlia is our most Mediterranean Cityplotter.
Her love story with permaculture began in 2012, when she was living in a rural community in southern Spain.
In 2014 she returned to the city, Berlin, and there she deepened her training, attending Cityplot's annual Urban Permaculture course with Leonie Woidt-Wallisser.
Since then, Júlia has been working as a designer and consultant for urban gardens in Berlin and Barcelona.
During these years, she has also worked temporarily as a farmer in several farms and ecovillages in Denmark, Latin America, Morocco and Spain as well as coordinator of our Pluk! CSA in Amsterdam.
Júlia obtained her PDC at the Institut de Permacultura Montsant in 2017 and is currently also part of the teaching team of the online master program "Design for Sustainability" at Gaia Education.
Contact Júlia: julia@cityplot.org
Sweden TEAM
SUZANNE OOMMEN
Sweden Team & Online Coordinator
Workshops, Restaurants, Children, Garden Consultations
Born and brought up in India, Suzanne grew up surrounded by the intensive cultivation practiced in Kerala kitchen gardens and soaked up the interdependencies inherent in holistic, organic agriculture. She also spent what we now call ‘a free range childhood’ in one of the most biodiverse regions of the world, the western ghats of southern India, roaming around the hills.
She studied art and design in Bombay, and worked in publishing in Dubai and marketing in Toronto. In Toronto she rediscovered her calling by growing vegetables in the backyard, learning about composting, and working in local farmer’s markets.
She did her permaculture training with Patrick Whitefield in England and has experiments with self-sufficiency in her allotment garden in the Netherlands.
In Amsterdam, Suzanne joined Cityplot in 2012. She taught worm composting and the Get Down Get Dirty year course in urban edible gardening and coordinated community and restaurant gardens. Over the last three years she was intensely involved with the Stadsboerderij Moestuin community, producing organic fruits and vegetables for Amsterdam’s New West neighbourhood.
She now lives in the south of Sweden in a village surrounded by small farms, lakes and forests and is once again pursuing the dream of growing a self-sufficient, closed loop permaculture garden. Suzanne intends to become actively involved in her local community and to provide garden consultations and workshops, both online and in person.
Contact Suzanne: suzanne@cityplot.org
BELGIUM TEAM
GIULIA VARIARA
Amsterdam Team
Workshops, Tours and outings
Giulia is a professional ecologist and nature guide in the Netherlands and Belgium. She graduated in Forestry and Environmental Science at the University of Padua (Italy), and since 2016 she has organized hiking tours for locals and expats. During the summer months, she is outside at night searching for bats with her bat detector.
Giulia organizes and facilitates different kind of activities in nature such as workshops about wildlife (mainly bats and wolves), nocturnal walks looking for bats and listening to their calls and hiking experiences for whoever wants to meet new people while exploring the countryside and learning more about our natural world. "Spending time in nature regularly is an essential component of health and psychological resiliency" (David Suzuki).
Contact Giulia: giulia@cityplot.org
Friends OF CITYPLOT
ALLAN POOT
International Friend
Allan brings a strong business acumen to the table, whilst coming from a humanitarian angle. Having started life in Africa, where the air was clean and the horizon far away, he would like to see city dwellers enjoying the basics of what he once took so much for granted. Nowadays, his ideal working role combines his engineering, business and sales skills with his emotions. Being part of something new that is based on good ethical and moral standards make his heart sing! Combining strong interpersonal relationship skills with excellent administrative ability, Allan’s role within Cityplot is focused on the business interactions required for the success and growth of the overall vision.
Contact Allan: allan@cityplot.org
IWAN GERRITSEN
Amsterdam Friend
Iwan is a garden designer and soil enthusiast. He strongly believes that healthy soil is humanity's most precious resource. His goal and passion are to help people learn good soil practices and reconnect with nature.
His professional experiences have been shaped by travel and encounters, with
a certificate in Permaculture Design from Terra Alta (Portugal) and work on permaculture and organic mushroom farms in the Azores. Sustainability consultant during the week, designer and green thumb during the weekends, he enjoys making terrariums and designing urban gardens using native species following permaculture principles.
He now wishes to share his knowledge and experience through workshops and meetings with nature lovers. Iwan knows that soils are under pressure worldwide and believes that through collaboration, exchanges, and contributions from everyone, it is possible to build a greener world. Iwan is currently on a sabbatical from Cityplot.
Contact: iwan@cityplot.org
ANNELIES VISSER
Amsterdam Friend
Annelies was born and raised in Amsterdam but has always had a fascination for the natural world. She studied and taught biology in different countries, while spending most of her free time on organic farms. She was a student at Warmonderhof in 2013-2014 and around the same time joined Ann at the urban farming collective Cityplot to teach workshops. Becoming an organic farmer is a dream come true for Annelies. She loves to be part of a community of people who understand that nothing is more important in life than access to healthy food.
Contact Annelies: annelies@cityplot.org
ROSA VAN GIESSEN
Amsterdam Friend
While studying Political Science in Amsterdam, Rosa got sidetracked by an obsession to grow her own food. After doing her thesis on civilian food production and an internship in a community garden in Amsterdam, she did a Permaculture year course in 2013. Years followed in which she started a community garden in the centre of Amsterdam (now 'Shaffy's tuin') and tried to get as much practical and theoretical experience as she could. Among other things she did internships and courses with the Portuguese Permaculturist Helder Valente, Balkan Ecology Project in Bulgaria, the Field from Plants for a Future and Schumacher College in the UK. She has been teaching and gardening professionally since 2015 but went full time with her company 'Boerenverstand' in 2018 and since has worked as a garden coach at the healing gardens of Bloei & Groei, as a garden butler at Mijn Stadstuin and has been teaching, writing about, designing and implementing many edible gardens. The largest one is a food forest of 0,6 hectares. She was also a proud member of the Cityplot Collective for five years. Now she is in Greece to fulfill her dream of living a self-sufficient life in nature, and while doing so trying to inspire others to do the same.
You can contact her at: rosa@boerenverstand.info, find her website at www.boerenverstand.info, or check out her blog about the trip at https://www.polarsteps.com/RosaBoerenverstand