by Hannah from India

On a normal working day, I was sitting at my desk in front of my computer in the Ecumenical Department of the Evangelical Church of Dortmund. „Hannah?“ called my colleague Carolin -I could hear the excitement in her voice- and I ran quickly into her office. „We got an invitation from sevengardens,“ she said „sevengardens?“ I asked? I had never heard of it before.

She patiently explained that sevengardens is a project that produces colors from natural ingredients, all from their own home garden. Her excitement has now been transferred to me. At the beginning of July, on a really hot and sunny day for Germany, we started our journey from Dortmund to the really beautiful Hof Emschermündung in Dinslaken. The farm is – as the name implies – at a river mouth, surrounded by bright yellow sunflower fields. When we step into the yard, we are already in the studio: a small colorful laboratory with small glasses of cheerful colors. On the walls hung beautiful paintings and works of art.

First, we started with a roundtable discussion in which Peter Reichenbach, artist and initiator of sevengardens, explained in detail how and why sevengardens began in 1996. The SDGs, the Sustainable Development Goals, with which the United Nations seeks to promote sustainable economic, social and environmental development, have repeatedly been referred to. This part of the theory was exhausting for me, which was certainly due to the fact that everything was explained in German, and I could not wait to see sevengardens in practice.

Finally, the lengthy theory part was over. The artist moved into his laboratory and began to cut open a piece of red cabbage and extract the liquid from the cabbage. After a short time of juicing, a magical blue was created. We were surprised and could hardly believe it. Then he reached for a lemon, pressed a few drops in the blue color, and this was immediately within a few seconds to a beautiful pink. We were blown away. And it went even further: now he took a small piece of alum and added it again to the blue pigment, and the color immediately became a lush green. The most surprising part for me was that everything was done in less than a minute.

„100% natural“, no rocket science, but only with the help of natural ingredients, the brightest color can be produced. No chemistry, no additives!

The session was magical, colorful and definitely an eye-opener!

Should we also create a sevengarden in the volunteershouse in Dortmund? What do you all think about it?