A five acre food forest?

Yes, we're still in the middle of planning a fourth community food garden, but in the meantime we are also talking to Daylesford Secondary College about the possibility of a fifth garden at the school. The edible, ecological and educational possibilities of this site are potentially huge.

L-R Dave Stephens, Robert Hewat, Veronica Pellet and Alexis Pitsopoulos. Photo: Patrick Jones

Last Friday a first meeting was arranged by Dave Stephens (local forest activist and future parent of the school) who invited Alexis Pitsopoulos (local forager, herbalist, locavore cook and edible weedsman), Robert Hewat (local botanist, parent), Patrick Jones (community food system activist, designer and poet) and Veronica Pellet (French WWOOFer) to look over the site. We look forward to working with the school.

June working bees

We had two working bees this month. One at Albert Street where Eric Dando took a compost and worm farm workshop...

 

And another at Rea Lands Park, where the herbalists starting planning the pharmacopeia, or medicinal plants section of the community garden.

The Good Life

As part of The Good Life Festival DCFG hosted a productive gardens walk yesterday. Jo, Tony, Meg and Patrick chaperoned about twenty walkers through the town to visit three backyard gardens, showing diverse approaches to ecological food generation. All three gardens belong to DCFG participants who are not only committed to family sufficiency but to community sufficiency.

We started at the Albert Street garden where Patrick gave a brief account of how the garden got established before moving on to Jasmin and Adrian's lovely sun-trapping garden, which is beautifully set out with much space for children to play due to the space saving designs using espalier fruit trees along some boundary fencing and in front of north-facing shed walls.

We then walked on to Scotty and Alison's lovely wild backyard garden, one of the most productive in the town and one that is very easy to maintain. It is a great example of a carefree food garden with established fruit trees that produce mountains of fruit each year. 

We finished our walk at Meg and Patrick's which, like the previous two gardens, was well endowed with poultry, compost systems and perennial and annual food crops.

Thanks to everyone who came along to share experiences and knowledges about growing food. Don't forget the working bee next Saturday 9th June at 10am at the Albert St garden.