Five year birthday celebrations and giveaway!
Sunday, June 24, 2012 at 10:15AM Goodness, this June marks five years since we embarked on our adventure in urban sustainability and set about transforming a typical house and lawn into a healthy, eco friendly home with a flourishing food garden.
And what an adventure it’s been! In the early days up went the solar panels and the solar hot water, and we got busy doing some green renovations with non-toxic paint, natural floors, ceiling and wall insulation, rainwater tanks and greywater systems.
Then oh the dreaming for a delicious garden – it began! We spent about three months working out the landscape design, figuring out where each and every fruit tree and garden element would be best placed. Then with a vengeance we turf-cut the entire block in October 2007, flipped the lawn on its head and sowed green manure crops to improve the soil. Out went the swimming pool and in went the veggie patch. Our huge concrete driveway was ripped up to make way for a citrus grove, with the concrete painstakingly recycled into a mosaic style garden path that meanders through our food forest. Over time we’ve put in over 100 fruiting trees, shrubs and vines, over 50 different species with everything from avocado to white sapote.
Chickens have joined us, and we relocated a swarm of bees to make home in our top bar bee hive. After creating a garden pond, frogs quickly came to join our garden too.
Our garden and home have woven themselves into our souls in even more magical ways – we celebrated our marriage in the veggie patch, and birthed our beautiful little girl right here at home.
Our local community has flourished in exciting ways over the last five years, with the passion and determination of many wonderful people. The Flame Tree Community Food Co-op and the ‘Waste-not fruit and veg swap’ were born, and community gardens are continuing to grow. Through the Illawarra Biodiversity and Local Food Strategy for Climate Change project, involving Wollongong, Kiama and Shellharbour councils with funding support from the NSW Environmental Trust, we helped create the Illawarra Edible Garden Guide and community fruit tree groves.
We’ve put down roots in this little piece of paradise reclaimed, and in our community. We can’t wait to see what the next five years, and fifty years here will bring.
It’s been wonderful sharing our adventures with you through this website over the past half a decade, and we look forward to sharing many more years together.
For our fifth birthday celebrations we’re giving away a copy of the new ABC Organic Gardener Essential Guide, issue 5 which is all about creating a great food garden. To be the lucky winner, just leave a comment on this post letting us know what you’d like to hear more about on this blog. We’ll randomly select the winner in two weeks on 8 July, so check back in then! Good luck!
8 July update - Thanks so much to everyone for all your lovely comments and fantastic suggestions for furture blog posts! It is this wonderful feedback that keeps us blogging away, and we'll try our best to post about the suggested topics down the track. The lucky randomly selected winner was "Mandy" - congratulations and we hope you enjoy the Organic Gardener Guide!
Reader Comments (26)
cityfarmer@gmail.com
Hopefully I have copied the email contact ok, but if not I can try to resend it to you. Its a Canadian site that gathers info and stories about urban sustainability from around the world and publishes them with the assistance of the government ! Your story would be of interest to them and I know that they would like to have you as a contact.
Keep up the positive work and please keep sharing it with us.
It has been lovely following this space and seeing your garden, home and family grow and develop.
I enjoy reading your tried and tested recipes using your home grown seasonal produce, so I'd love to see more.
x
Barb.
I've been a gardener all my life but hadn't fully explored the concept of the food forest until I stumbled on your website about 3 years ago. I recently bought a block in Kiama and was excited to recieve my first of many Delaneys deliveries containing my precious Nightingale persimmon this week. I find your descriptions of individual fruiting plants really helpful in deciding what would suit my yard and would love to see this list expanded. I'm thinking of a feijoa if you'd like to do that next!
Congratulations on reaching 5 years!
A few suggestions I'd love to see for future articles:
- What didn't work (what mistakes have you made, what setbacks have you suffered, and what did you learn and how did you recover from them)
- What food can we grow in winter (what foods do you grow for winter harvests?)
- Where to start (for someone new to food gardening and sustainable living, where should they start and what are the first things they can do?)
Keep up the great work! Hopefully I'll see you tonight at the Climate Challenge wrap-up.
Thank You.
My suggestions for what I'd like to hear more about on this blog would be:
- lessons learned (both positive and not so positive)
- managing native and non-native plants in the same garden space (e.g. coping with phosphorous requirements)
- sustainable purchasing/eating choices beyond the home - you do a fabulous job on this in so many areas already, but I'm especially interested to hear about choices on matters such as grains and pulses that aren't so easy to grow at home.
Thanks again for your inspirational blog.
I always pop in and see what you're up to and it keeps me going when I think I 'can't' get things happening here in this 'town' in this garden and this house. I have to keep thinking look how far we (and you, through this blog) have come, so I can get further down the track too, I reckon.
:)
I would love to hear more about what you have learned regarding seed saving, what works and what doesn't in your area. I have a very deep interest in heirloom seeds, especially vegies and often sell or swap myself. I grew up with parents similar to you, so count myself blessed, as it has stood me in good stead all my life.
Since the Global Financial crisis it has made me more aware of how many people are struggling so I would also love to know how you would go about assisting people on a very tight budget to set up their own yards on a small, very manageable scale. If there is only a small amount of space, it can really help out with food, and with the company it can bring in for others who can't always afford to get out, that would be a bonus. Gardening and sharing do that, don't they :-)) Thank you for your generosity of spirit and your time. I really enjoy coming back here from time to time to check it out, and pass on your info to others. This is so well done Happy Earth