In 2012 – the year of the bee – Deborah Post read Rudolph Steiner’s book The Bees. As she closed the last page of this book, she looked around and realised that what Steiner had predicted 100 years ago was now taking place. Namely: the extinction of bees through monoculture, grassland and agricultural poison.

Deborah felt she had to stand up for the bees (and, by extension, humans). She took an organic dynamic farming and beekeeping course to understand the problem of bees. And also got her first own hive at Op Hodenpijl that year. So she not only learnt ‘from paper’ how badly the bees were doing, but when her hive failed and died in the middle of summer while she thought everything was blooming. But everything was grass. That was also when she really felt that action was needed NOW.

1 km from Op Hodenpijl, work was underway on the (opening of) the new A4 Delft – Schiedam motorway. That was where Deborah sowed her first 6 hectares of wildflower verge for the bees. It took 1 year to get that done.