year long trainings

MARCh - OCTOBER 2026

GDGD - 6 sessions

E-mail us for registration & more info

Get Down Get Dirty

This workshop is taught in English with Dutch support.

We invite you to become one of our GDGD students! We are excited to once again share our renowned annual course guiding you through the whole growing season. You can choose to combine the Get Down, Get Dirty workshop series with an internship at one of our urban farm locations. And this year GDGD is one part of the Urban Permaculture Design Course! See more about that below.

This in-depth series of 6 hour workshops covers the fundamentals of urban permaculture and sustainable organic growing as the seasons unfold. We will cover crop planning, seeds, seedlings, composting, soil health, ergonomic gardening, propagation by cuttings, creating a balanced garden, various vegetables, herbs, fruit, wild and edible flower crops, plant families, seed saving, four-season growing, harvesting, food processing, preservation and fermentation, and much more. 

In addition to acquiring solid gardening knowledge, we will be looking into where this fits in the current socio-political spectrum and concentrating on living lightly on the earth. We will give an overview of pioneering urban farming projects in and around Amsterdam, and visit a few of them. A healthy part of the workshop is taught outside in the vegetable garden.

This workshop is suitable for beginners and people with a few years experience.
We combine theory with getting dirty, so please wear appropriate clothing!

These are themes of each session:

1. Planning an edible city garden // Sunday 8 March
   A holistic introduction to permaculture and  urban growing

2. Planning and starting your crops // Sunday 29 March
   A four-season crop planning and sowing

3. Building healthy soil and composting // Sunday 19 april
   Soil indicators, creatures and animal cycles

4. Creating balance in the garden // Sunday 31 may
   Crop care, biodiversity and plant families

5. Fall & winter gardening // Sunday 6 September
   Seed saving, winter crops and extending the growing season

6. Preserving your harvest (and harvest party!) // Sunday 4 October
   Harvesting, pickling and preservingThese are the confirmed dates of the sessions:

Coffee and tea are provided. We will share a vegan potluck midway during the session.

If you are interested in an internship to accompany your training we are happy to arrange this for you at one of Cityplot’s exciting and educational locations (Stadsboerderij Osdorp or the Pluk! CSA at either the Boterbloem or Fruittuin location). Internships are possible most days of the week at one of our farms, for as many days or half-days as you like. More irregular? You can get your hands into the soil every Wednesday or Saturday between 13.00h - 17.00h we have volunteer sessions at the Stadsboerderij vegetable and herb gardens (March - October).

Permaculture Design Course

Get Down, Get Dirty will also be a key part of our new Urban Permaculture Design Course (PDC) this year. This means that you can  opt to expand the GDGD course with PDC modules that cover food forest systems, social permaculture, the built environment, design principles and  project development and participants will receive  personal guidance during their design process. Email us for more information about how to take part in Cityplot’s new and unique PDC here!

THE PRACTICALS

Location:  Stadsboerderij Osdorp, Botteskerksingel 30b, Amsterdam (close to tram 17)

Time/date: Sundays from 10:00h - 16:00h - March 8 • March 29 • April 19 • May 31 • September 6 • October 4

Language: English with Dutch support

Teachers: Ann Doherty, Eva Thomassen, Naomi Vermeulen

Cost: 500 euros including optional internship placement

Extension:   Urban Permaculture Design Course (PDC)

Email us and we send you our registration form.

If this group fills up we can accomodate a second group (possibly in Dutch).

* Check our GDGD policies here

Register FOR GDGD & more info HERE

YOUR INSTRUCTORS

ANN DOHERTY

Ann is an urban farmer, educator, beekeeper and worm composter.

She studied urban agriculture at the University of Guelph (distance learning) 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 200 families in 2024.

In 2023, she took over the coordination of the Stadsboerderij Osdorp garden. She also teaches and coordinates a community garden with Bloei & Groei and does community outreach with city-wide 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.

Eva THOMASSEN

Eva is an educator, and loves designing & building edible gardens. She is an artist at heart and among many interests & skills are working with her hands, calligraphy and illustration in pen & watercolour and cooking.

Born in Amsterdam, she graduated in marketing and moved to Barcelona and London for 12 years. She co-owned a hiphop/skate/surf clothing boutique and worked in 90’s London fashion world. In London she started an apprenticeship for clapper loader and became an analogue photographer. She returned to Amsterdam to study art and started surfing regularly. Through her love for the ocean, she discovered a bigger love for the outdoors and as her practices and training in art & yoga evolved she started taking more of an interest in the bigger issues in the world. After a period of feeling really powerless she is very grateful to be able to contribute to the awareness around the provenance of food as well as sustainability and fell completely in love with gardening.

She formally joined the collective in 2018; she ran the biketour team, got her Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) and is a longstanding member of the Kids Team; greening schoolyards with edible gardens and weekly lessons.

When not teaching the next generation about nature & growing food (4 -12 years old), she is often found at Stadsboerderij Osdorp, where she coordinates the herb garden. She also enjoys giving workshops and organising events for adults, garden design & maintenance.

You might still catch her giving a few urban farming bike tours. Permaculture’s appreciation for generalists warms het heart!

Naomi vermeulen

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.

Sylvia AVONTUUR (PDC)

Workshops, Garden Consultations

From Paris fashion PR to the fertile ground of permaculture, Sylvia traded psychological marketing tricks for a mission to reveal nature's abundant wisdom.

Inspired by her experiences at regenerative projects in Portugal and a transformative course in syntropic agroforestry with Ernst Götsch, she discovered her true calling. Sylvia embraced the permaculture principle that "the problem is the solution," and turned the challenges of urban living into opportunities for growth—quite literally. Her small city garden in Haarlem became a canvas for vertical gardening and roof cultivation, demonstrating that food production knows no spatial boundaries. Passionate about preserving heirloom varieties and reimagining food systems, Sylvia facilitates gardening workshops and tasting events that inspire others to see food as a deeply personal and collective experience. She collaborates with chefs to create immersive experiences that tell the story of local, seasonal and nutritious produce.

From creating bespoke edible landscapes for hospitality and corporate spaces to community garden initiatives, she invites us to reimagine our relationship with food and nature that reconnects us with life's fundamental cycles.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.