Time Circus Builds a Floating Vegetable Garden on an Abandoned Ship Crane in Belgium

Strolling around the beautiful city of Antwerp we stumbled across a floating piece of greenery, anchored under the shadow of the MAS Museum. Welvaert is an <a title="Time Circus Build Floating Vegetable Garden On Abandoned Ship Crane" href="http://inhabitat.com/mobile-urban-agriculture-blooms-in-berlins-prinzessinnengarten/" target="_blank">urban vegetable garden</a> constructed by art collective <a title="Time Circus Build Floating Vegetable Garden On Abandoned Ship Crane" href="http://www.timecircus.org/en/" target="_blank">Time Circus</a> on an abandoned ship crane, and features a treehouse made of recycled materials, a kitchen and a small family of chickens.

Antwerp’s <a title="Time Circus Build Floating Vegetable Garden On Abandoned Ship Crane" href="http://www.mas.be/" target="_blank">MAS Museum</a> lent the people at Time Circus an old unused crane on which the collective built their cool green space.

Anchored at <a title="Time Circus Build Floating Vegetable Garden On Abandoned Ship Crane" href="http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonapartedok" target="_blank">Bonapartedok</a>, the experimental space is designed to engage locals and visitors with sustainable urban farming practices.

The collective received support from a number of enthusiastic locals and some sponsors, whose names now float nearby the garden.

Time Circus’ fantastic <a title="Time Circus Build Floating Vegetable Garden On Abandoned Ship Crane" href="http://inhabitat.com/airhotel-6-high-flying-hotel-rooms-made-of-recycled-materials-in-belgium/" target="_blank">Tree Hotel</a>, which featured some crazy recycled tree houses as rooms served as inspiration for their treehouse on Welavert.

The <a title="Time Circus Build Floating Vegetable Garden On Abandoned Ship Crane" href="http://inhabitat.com/6-cozy-cocoons-to-retreat-from-the-world/" target="_blank">cocoon</a> for this garden, which looks like a birds’ nest and is cladded with waterproof tarpaulin—the same material as used in the construction of Frietag bags.

Another cute feature from the floating garden is a glazed greenhouse.

The greenhouse is equipped with basic cooking elements for making delicious vegetarian meals using the garden’s produce.

They even have some chickens living at the garden in their own little wooden palace.

Local <a title="Time Circus Build Floating Vegetable Garden On Abandoned Ship Crane" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_food" target="_blank">organic</a> apples (this time not from the garden) were used for making juice at a recent floating event.

We caught up with one of Time Circus’ designers, Sebastiaan Boumans, who was building a second floating project next to the garden.

The new adventure consists of a traveling floating bar, atelier for artists and kitchen, all in a single boat.

He is building it from<a title="Time Circus Build Floating Vegetable Garden On Abandoned Ship Crane" href="http://inhabitat.com/recycled-gecekondu-shelter-at-berlins-tempelhof-airport-teaches-kids-about-green-design/" target="_blank"> wood left over</a> from some train tracks and the plan, he said, is to take the floating project to Lisbon and the <a title="Time Circus Build Floating Vegetable Garden On Abandoned Ship Crane" href="http://www.czech.cz/" target="_blank">Czech Republic</a>.

It’s great to see how a piece of machinery that hasn’t been used for 42 years can be converted into a blooming floating space for growing food, right at the heart of Antwerp.