Samenvatting

Within the Netherlands, historic estates form an important part of the Dutch landscape with many sites dating back to the seventeenth and eighteenth century. In recent years, there has been increased attention and interest to stimulate the development and revival of historic estate kitchen gardens in the Netherlands in order to preserve the historical function and heritage of these gardens as well as re-define their purpose from a meaningful, community-oriented and shared-value dimension. Parallel to this trend is the growing interest in community food initiatives such as Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and urban community food gardens which are in response to greater awareness to food provenance, local food production and seasonal eating among consumer groups. Core features of these emerging food initiatives are the ways in which citizens are actively involved in the activities and decision-making from a community collective and bottom-up approach. Community collective governance can be understood from the concept of the ‘commons’ whereby the place, the people and their governance are central to the long-term management of a shared resource. Together, these cultural heritage and local food provisioning trends propose a new purpose for stimulating the revival of historic estate kitchen gardens as a community collective in the Netherlands. In collaboration with the cultural heritage organisation ‘Erfgoedhuis Zuid-Holland’ and the professorship ‘Future Food Systems’ of HAS green academy, this study explores the extent to which historic estate kitchen gardens in the province of Zuid-Holland can be revived and maintained as a commons for the purpose of local food provisioning, community cohesion and heritage preservation. Consequently, the research aims to answer the following question: ‘How can the collective governance of ‘commoning’ act as a foundation for the revival and cultural renewal of historic estate kitchen gardens within the province of Zuid-Holland?’