Events

Honey Highway organises inspiration events for companies at Op Hodenpijl estate or on location. Both for companies that sponsor Honey Highway verges and bee parks and companies that want to support the initiative in another way.

Honey Highway also facilitates dozens of lectures and debates, including with discussion leader Felix Rottenberg, with very stimulating themes around Bees and Biodiversity. There are always more than 100 participants present and this is how directors of Ministries, Rijkswaterstaat, Provinces together with nature organisations and well-known and less well-known companies and entrepreneurs ensure that Honey Highway is emulated throughout the Netherlands.

Honey Highway also organises tailor-made meetings for companies like Dutch Flower Group with more than 1,000 employees.

biodiversity tour • (panel) discussion • music, historical buildings • lunch, dinner, drinks in the organic restaurant • in a beautiful setting

Vernissage 2022

Following on from 2020 and 2021, Honey Highway once again organised a Garden Party & Vernissage for relations in 2022. Invited guests experienced the Flower Field, Bees and Floral Still Life. The festive reception was in the Garden. There was a tour of the Flower Field and then a special experience at the Bees, with the walk-in of a swarm in hive. Following this was the Vernissage in the church: man-sized Flower Still lifes by Van der Vegt, a well-known artist, who has had his studio in Ruigoord, Amsterdam, for 20 years.

Business event

International cosmetics brand Guerlain has its annual Team Day at Honey Highway on the Op Hodenpijl estate. Inspiration and education on biodiversity, bees and wild flowers. Guerlain products are made from 98% natural ingredients like flowers and plant extracts but also bee products and does not want to harm the bees for this. Many beautiful developments and projects have already emerged from the collaboration with Honey Highway, Guerlain supports ‘black bee island’ an island and nature reserve off the French coast.

Guided tour flower field

Honey Highway organises tours of the Flower Field and through the Kitchen Garden at Op Hodenpijl’s Buitenplaats. The organic flower field is an inspiration about native and cultivated flower species, soil, seeds. Mariette Kamphuis takes you into this fascinating world and, finally, you can marvel at the most beautiful fresh bouquets but also dry bouquets made in the studio by Floral designers. A longer biodiversity walk continues across the 25-hectare estate, through the polders with puddle grassland, herb-rich grassland, meadow birds, hares, cows with horns. All certified organic.

the bees

Honey Highway places a hive of bees at flower verges and bee parks as education, for bringing back the Dutch black honeybee. The Buitenplaats of Op Hodenpijl houses 9 bee colonies in hives and natural construction hives. For the 8th year in 2023, we will organise the biodynamic beekeeping course here. We also provide workshops for companies at the Bee. Pioneer Ferry Schutzelaar brings you very close to the Bees, you can stroke them and experience how they live.

Read more about the beekeeping course in this brochure.

sowING day

This photo was taken during the sowing event at Amsterdam’s Zuid-as with a team from Accenture. Honey Highway always organises an opening event when constructing a Honey Highway verge or Honey Highway Bee Park. This involves administrators, employees and usually a class of school children sowing and planting, as a symbol of the opening. During sowing and planting, there are a few short speeches to learn why we are doing this and what we are planting and sowing and also about the kind of soil and which becomes healthy again through biodiversity.

FROM GREEN DESERT TO BIODIVERSITY

Deborah Post has organised series of lectures at the Op Hodenpijl estate since 2012 to put Biodiversity higher on the agenda in the Netherlands. Inspiring speakers and debates led by Felix Rottenberg led to the launch of Honey Highway and this has been followed up in the Netherlands.

One evening had the theme ‘From Green Desert to Biodiversity’. This had 120 participants including 40 sustainability and marketing managers from Dutch Flower Group. The speaker was Helmy Abouleish. Together with his father, he started the very inspiring SEKEM in Egypt and developed it into what it is today. Here, 2,500 hectares of desert land far from the Nile have become fertile again through biodynamic agriculture and involving 10,000-and-some Egyptians in it as a development path.

estate op hodenpijl

Honey Highway is located at the Buitenplaats of estate Op Hodenpijl consisting of an area of 25 hectares. After an intensive renovation, a fully restored Op Hodenpijl opened its doors in 2007.

MEETING PLACE

Imiddels is het ontwikkeld tot restaurant, cultuurkerk, trouw- en rouwlocatie, centrum voor gezondheid en welzijn, vergaderplek en boerderij. Een plek waar mensen elkaar kunnen ontmoeten, ontdekken wie ze zijn en wat zij willen en waar ze zich bewust kunnen worden van hun kracht en talent. De Kerk biedt een programma aan met concerten, lezingen en meditaties.

RESTAURANT

Op Hodenpijl serves dishes made from produce from its own garden, greenhouse or stables. Taste the flavours of the land, dishes prepared with respect for people, animals and nature. The Buitenplaats consists of vegetable garden, sprouting greenhouse, fruit orchards, stables, haystack (visitors’ centre) and bee farm. The vegetables and fruit are organic and the animals are treated with love and attention. Next to Op Hodenpijl Garden is the organic flower field.

OPENING HOURS

You can visit Op Hodenpijl estate daily. The Buitenplaats is open daily from 09:00 to 17:00. The restaurant is open from Tuesday to Sunday. www.ophodenpijl.nl.