“Have you decided yet what you are going to say to the Minister?” my mother asked as I was about to leave for The Hague. “Because that Ms Verburg is no easy cookie”. I said that we were only attending the presentation of the book, so I wouldn’t actually be speaking to her. “Do you already know how you are going to sit on the chair in front of the Minister?” my brother (who was accompanying me) joked.

Shortly afterwards we were on the train gliding through melting winter landscapes on our way to the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality. We identified ourselves at the reception and proceeded to the refreshment room of the impressive building. Some well-known faces from the earlier battle award presentation were standing chatting at the wooden tables.

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We joined them and soon afterwards Gerda Verburg entered wearing a black floral dress (very appropriate for a Minister of Agriculture). After a colourful introduction from Mr Kremers, once professor in warm California, now chairman of natural innovations in our wet and chilly country, Verburg launched into a talk in which she highlighted the importance of forests – and then proceeded to proudly hand over her own version of the tree-filled book to Teo Wams, board member of the Forestry Board. Mr Wams told us that the average person in the Netherlands visits the woods 12 x a year. I secretly hope that we can raise this figure in the future by planting supermarket woods along the motorway.

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The chairman of InnovationNetwork then closed the meeting and invited us to help ourselves to drinks and snacks. Back home I was able to tell my mother “When Minister Verburg came over to us for a chat, my mouth was full of cake.”

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