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Meditation in the Vogelzangbeek valley
Innovative design of Brussels green parks for enhancing the well-being and healthy recovery of citizens.
Developing the green-blue network
The project
Stress is part of our daily life and sometimes invades our lives. Meditation can help us find the strength and calm we need. Contact with nature has been shown to improve human health. It benefits the cardiovascular system, reduces stress and anxiety, and stimulates cognitive abilities. Brussels Environnement has joined forces with the Erasmus hospital (ULB) to co-create a new green space in the Vogelzang valley in Anderlecht, combining “naturalness” and a meditative path with a therapeutic objective aimed to reduce stress and anxiety.. Nature-based solutions were adapted to redesign the parc with respect to its existing topography, thereby directly reinforcing the Brussels ecological network. Native plants were used to improve local diversity, highlighting the riparian environment and associated vegetation. A meditation path was integrated that contains 8 courses, allowing all visitors to experiment and train themselves in stress management and personal development techniques, from therapeutic hypnosis, relaxation, sophrology and mindfulness meditation.
Project location
Anderlecht
Contribution(s)
5 ha
Project costs
More than 500.000 €
Participant(s)
- Brussels Environnement;
- Eramus Hospital;
- Municipality of Anderlecht ;
- CCN Vogelenzang ;
- Vlaams Brabant (Province);
- Sint-Pieters-Leeuw (commune)
How are the criteria of the objective met?
Urban and peri-urban areas
Nature-based solutions were adapted to redesign the parc with respect to its existing topography, thereby directly reinforcing the Brussels ecological network. Native plants were used to improve local diversity, highlighting the riparian environment and associated vegetation.
Possible initiatives in which the project is involved :
Natura2000; PANORAMA – solutions for a healthy planet
Long-term maintenance
The park will be extensively managed. This approach prioritizes the preservation and enhancement of natural ecosystems within the park, while minimizing human intervention and maximizing ecological processes. It involves adopting practices that mimic natural ecosystems and allows them to function with minimal disruption.
A combination of late mowing with export of the mowed product and extensive pasture with low livestock load will result in increasingly impoverished soils leading to higher biodiversity richness. The non-profit organization ‘Les Moutons Bruxellois’ is responsible for the ecological management of permanent meadows and agroecological pastoralism in the park.
Specific wet habitats (wet meadows, reeds beds, alder/willow groves) will maintained by retaining water on site via natural basins and infiltration.
Wooded areas can freely develop, expect along the paths for safety reasons, and dead wood will be retained on site (circular biomass).
Benefits
- Restoring the ecosystem;
- Raising awareness regarding the direct response of nature to medical health disease;
- Healthy people = healthy economy;
- Strengthening the ecological corridor as a response to habitat fragmentation and degradation (biodiversity loss);
- Reinforcing the green-blue network;
- Improving soft mobility/strengthening the ecological corridor (Promenade Verte).
- Local people benefit, as well as disease people and nature conservationists.