Qualla: The Green Cathedral

The Green Cathedral: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sandra Fauconnier, CC BY 4.0. Imagine planting a cathedral. Not building one - planting one. In 1987 the Dutch conceptual artist Marinus Boezem walked out onto a patch of brand-new polder near Almere - land that had been seabed thirty years earlier - and began setting Lombardy poplar saplings into the soil in a very specific pattern. The pattern was the floor plan of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Reims, the coronation church of French kings, traced at full size: 150 metres long, 75 metres wide. The saplings were thin enough to grip in one hand. The idea was to wait.

Read more: The Green Cathedral on Qualla

Image: Sandra Fauconnier | CC BY 4.0

The Green Cathedral: A Floor Plan, a Polder

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wauteurz, CC BY-SA 4.0. Boezem, born in 1934, had been thinking about this work since the late 1970s, well before the polder he wanted was even ready to plant. Southern Flevoland was new ground in every sense: drained from the IJsselmeer, levelled, and offered up to Dutch artists in a remarkable governm...

Read more: The Green Cathedral on Qualla

Image: Wauteurz | CC BY-SA 4.0

The Green Cathedral: The Cathedral Grows In

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit RogAir, CC BY-SA 3.0. Lombardy poplars are not patient trees. They go up like green spears, slim and vertical, and within a decade the saplings were taller than houses; today the mature trees reach roughly 30 metres - close to the springline of a real Gothic vault. Walk inside the planting and the eff...

Read more: The Green Cathedral on Qualla

Image: RogAir | CC BY-SA 3.0

The Green Cathedral: A Sanctuary People Actually Use

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hay Kranen, CC BY 4.0. What Boezem may not have predicted is how thoroughly the Dutch would adopt the Green Cathedral as an actual sanctuary. Couples have married inside the nave. Memorial services are held in the apse. Yoga classes, choir rehearsals, art performances and ecumenical gatherings all take...

Read more: The Green Cathedral on Qualla

Image: Hay Kranen | CC BY 4.0

The Green Cathedral: Death and Resurrection in Beech

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brbbl, CC BY-SA 3.0. The most haunting thing about the Green Cathedral is that Boezem designed it to die. Lombardy poplars are short-lived - sixty or eighty years is a generous estimate - and the planting is already past middle age. Not far from the main cathedral, Boezem cleared the same Gothic floo...

Read more: The Green Cathedral on Qualla

Image: Brbbl | CC BY-SA 3.0

The Green Cathedral: What the Polder Remembers

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jan dijkstra, CC BY-SA 4.0. Stand inside the nave at sunset and the geometry does something strange to the polder. The wide flat horizon that defines Flevoland - the new land, where every road is straight and every field is rectangular - is broken, briefly, by a Gothic geometry that comes from another count...

Read more: The Green Cathedral on Qualla

Image: Jan dijkstra | CC BY-SA 4.0