Plato’s Garden, one of the winners of this year’s VU Education Impact Award, is a bottom-up educators’ movement spanning six faculties, from the VU Amsterdam to the University of Twente. The movement promotes, implements, investigates, and scales nature-based learning into higher education; and develops different forms of nature-based learning such as forest bathing, eco-walks, and art & nature-based learning. Plato’s Garden unites VU academics working with Nature-Based Pedagogy (NBP) – learning with nature, not only about nature.
What we do?
- Experiment with nature-based learning in and around VU courses.
- Investigate and assess impacts (short and long term)
- Share, connect and support NBP practice across VU
Why the name?
Named after the ancient Academus – the grove where Plato taught in the Academy’s garden.
Who is it for?
VU educators, researchers and programme teams who want to design, try out, research or scale nature-based learning.
Current interventions
- Art & Nature-Based Learning (A/NBL)
- Ecowalk
- Forest Bathing
Among the places where we learn
- Anna’s Tuin & Ruigte
- VU Botanical Garden (Zuidas)
- Gijsbrecht van Aemstelpark
- Amstelpark
Join the ecosystem: Interested in collaborating, piloting an intervention, or sharing a practice? Contact: tree@vu.nl.
Curious to know more about how this initiative came about? Read this interview with one of the initiators, Dr. Mario Torralba Viorreta.
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