#167 Permaculture East Comes To Phillip Bay!!
As part of our effort to tread lightly on our planet and enable us to be more resilient in today’s world of peak oil, climate change and transition to a more local economy, my wife and I are embarking on the remodelling of our garden areas to accommodate a large amount of edible permaculture garden designed and built by the dynamic Permaculture East group lead by the indefatigable Peter Driscoll.
I joined Permaculture East in July 2009 and immediately became interested in having our garden become the next project for the team. I am also looking forward to helping other members install their gardens in the fullness of time. Fortunately, we got in first and Peter has arranged for a designer, and whoever of the group wishes to join us, to work on as design possibly as soon as Saturday, October 17.
This does depend on the success of my 2009 World Masters’ Games basketball team but I don’t expect that to be a problem as I can’t see us making the finals but, hey, one never knows.
Of course, I’ll keep you updated here and post some photos and links to other info when I can.
Please visit my three other Live Local pages: Making Our Home Sustainable, The Compost Revolution Comes To Phillip Bay and Sustainability Street Approach Comes to Phillip Bay!!


Comments (3)
Thanx, everyone, for coming over on Saturday for the permaculture garden design session. It certainly has got the process started! I've just found online a great raised planter bed solution from Birdies Garden Products called "Raised Modular Veggie Bed" They are Australian made and are now available at Bunnings!
It looks like two of the largest size, 2900mm x 1500mm x 820mm, would do us fine down the back @ around $385 each. That is much cheaper than using new timber and much easier to build as you can se from the videos on the website. I've also found a no dig method of filling the beds from the Geelong Botanic which is a Word file.
We've engaged Warren Salkeld <stscie@ozemail.com.au> to pop around next Monday to remove our unwanted trees, trim a few of the rest and leave us with the mulch they provide. He is an excellent fellow, very committed to sustainable practises and lives in, appropriately, Botany. I would recommend his services as an arborist to anyone in our group/s. He also has excellent plantscaping ideas. We're going to replace the trees with low, native shrubs for the birdies as well as minimising their intrusion into our gardens sun space. Grevilleas seem the best option there.
So, the plan is to have the trees attended to by next Monday, then have a look at what extra sunlight that provides before we work out the size and number of beds we need and where we'll put them. Then I'll source them as well as the necessary stuff to go in them. We'll need to think about their watering needs as well with the installation of our water tank uppermost in our minds. We still want to extend the original herb patch at ground level near the house as planned, so that'll be part of our Permablitz day as well.
We are not too keen on the grape vines from a practicality viewpoint at the moment. We will go ahead with the shade cloth panels which I already have stored in the garage. The grapes still may be done if we come around to the idea in the future.
We look forward to the next stage of our garden development.
What a fabulous homepage! If that's not enough to inspire apermaculture gardening, nothing is! All those beautiful shots of the garden and food made me feel so good. Thankyou
Than you, Pauline, for your wonderful comments. there's nothing better than to cook up tucker that has elements in it which one planted, tended and harvested. For example, tonight I fashioned and excellent pasta sauce from eggplants, red chilli, sage and basil all from our garden supplemented by other bought ingredients including onion, garlic, black pepper, bacon, tomatoes and white wine served on penne topped with romano and pecorino cheese accompanied by sour dough bread.
Granted, not everything is local in that lot. However, it's a start. :-)
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