Turning in at the gate, you pull up in front of a row of inoperative parking meters-obviously a joke in this rural outback beside the motorway. To one side, a pair of concrete silos has the word "Kultura" painted in green down one side. If you ask, you'll be told that they were put to use by a group of Swedish artists who produced colza oil.

In this season, the entrance area looks like a blend of summer camp and scrap yard. People dressed for physical labour on a torrid day come and go; others mill about among an assortment of trucks, vans and sheds. Workers, artists, visitors? A square corral of colossal wood beams recalls (but is not) the work of Antwerp sculptor Bernd Lohaus; similarly, a stack of industrial shipping containers suggests (but is not) a piece by visionary Antwerp architect Luc Deleu.

A single shipping container serves as the entrance to the building ahead, its 1,000-metre facade a blank expanse of loose-cut stones encaged in wire mesh. The same material, used to create indoor partitions, runs like a motif through the outbuildings behind the main complex.

The foundation is built on - and of - the remains of its director Geert Vebeke's former trucking business. Until five years ago, the 12-hectare site and much of its 20,000 square metres of roofed-over space functioned as a hub where goods and materials were stored after being offloaded from ships and before being transported farther afield. The brick-sized stones that give the foundation its singular look are from cargo withheld because the customer failed to pay the bill. Much of the wood used inside -on the cafe's handsome table tops, for instance-comes from the floors of old shipping containers.

The main building opens onto an enormous greenhouse where art, flora and fauna co-mingle in scruffy symbiosis. Stray pieces of farm equipment rub shoulders with mechanised sculptures assembled from found materials; motion sensors activate coloured liquids in glass beakers; hens scratch near a circular pool; tropical plants seem to wither; and goldfish swim in a narrow moat on the far side of the greenhouse. A blaring boom box dangling at the end of a rope tied to a high beam is the only suggestion of organic life.

Verbeke, who has lived in Hemzeke for all of his 55 years, opened the foundation in June 2007. With his long, grey hair and shirt open in the heat, he looks more like a child of the '60s turned trucker than the self-styled arts patron he has become.

His gradual transformation from one to the other started when he began collecting 20th-century collages, largely by Belgians, in the early 1990s. Since then, he has amassed roughly 3,000 and expanded into the 21st century. They are kept in their own building toward the back of the property, where they are presented on a rotating basis in thematic exhibitions. The current show, featuring collages containing words or texts, includes works by ELT Messens, Alechinsky, Jacques Charlier and many, many others.

"My life is a collage," says Verbeke. "I take out things, bring them together and make something new. I don't connect with painting. It's important for me that there are layers. Anarchist, Dadaist, Surrealist: that's me. I'm not into politics." Verbeke's two-dimensional collages and their climate-controlled exhibition space are the foundation's most conventional components; it's their experimental ethos that radiates across the entire complex.

Just a few steps away, chicken coops house hybrid creatures hatched through Koen Vanmechelen's Cosmopolitan Chicken Research Project. Aiming to produce what the artist calls a "universal super bastard", the CCRP has so far crossbred 10 generations of chickens from all over the world, starting from a French-Belgian combo. Verbeke is interested not only in the ethical, political and cultural implications of Vanmechelen's project but also in its involvement with science and technology.

Artificial Nature, a large exhibition of contemporary, mostly Belgian, art - one of two temporary shows he stages each year - is made up of interdisciplinary works that exist at the crossroads of art, life, science and technology. From Martin uit den Bogaard's segmented cow slowly decomposing under glass (the work precedes Damian Hirst's notorious icon by several years) to Griet Dobbels' disappearing outdoor sculpture cast from a mixture of fat and chicken feed (the piece is gradually eaten by birds), the works are viscerally repellent, fascinating and poetic at once.

Lieven Standaert, currently in residence at the foundation, is developing a low-tech zeppelin. Inspired by his compatriot Panamarenko, whose flying machines function brilliantly on an imaginative level but don't actually get off the ground, Standaert is designing a hydrogen-powered "houseboat of the 21st century", which he hopes will really fly. If it does, it will be a flagship for clean-energy technology - and perhaps the ultimate castle in the air.

Standaert works at an enormous table in full view and converses with visitors. For other sorts of art experiments, Verbeke has built a closed laboratory that the public can observe through windows but not enter.

"I'm not so happy with things in museums," he says as we stroll across the overgrown grounds, which boast an artificial pond and are sown with motley outdoor sculptures, most of them part of the permanent collection. Joep Van Lieshout's "Sleep Rectum", a free-standing bedroom suite shaped precisely as its anatomical title suggests, may be reserved by overnight guests. The romantic getaway is approached over a bridge which spans a pond studded with blossoming lily-pads and a pair of black swans.

"Monet was here," says Verbeke of his unkempt idyll, adding that the dragonflies speeding to and fro are a sure sign of water purity. Visitors exploring the premises tend to head straight for the most conspicuous structure, Scottish artist Aeneas Wilder's 12-metre high dome of stacked wood. Air and sunlight pour in cracks and through the large ocular on top, creating an ever- changing pattern within. A small group of young people sit quietly on the grassy floor, just observing. Nearby, bees swarm around hives placed on the sill of a cut-away shipping container. Not art, I'm told. Honey.

"I'm a very bad traveller. I've never been to Venice or Kassel," Verbeke admits. So how does he come across new art? As the foundation's reputation spreads, its sources of information multiply, but word-of-mouth and recommendations by friends and colleagues still play a key role. Verbeke discovered the work of Bogaard, one of his favourite artists, when he agreed to transport the sculpture of a friend to an exhibition outside Antwerp. The show was in a space run by Bogaard. The rest is history, thanks in no small part to his truck.

Artificial Nature
The Verbeke Foundation
Westakker, Kemzeke
Until November 15

www.verbekefoundation.com