It was Fun: Balcony Garden workshop, veggie village

My favorite way of spending a couple of hours would have to be giving balcony garden workshops. You meet people at their most interesting, hatching up schemes for achieving the improbable: paradise on concrete. And see how happy they get when they hear all the tricks that will allow their fuzzy balcony aspirations to become crisp, leafy reality.

This 3 hour workshop was originally planned for the local permaculture dynamo, the wonderful Yukari Desjardins. We have lost Yukari. No matter how much we wish it to be different, she is gone. But continuing on projects she started, that's something we can actually do. For this day, I just had to hop on the Melbourne to Sunshine coast aeroplane, and do my thing.
I was so happy I could do this small thing.

Participants are always so different from each other, which makes break times the best kind of parties. Who turned up this time? Included in the mix of 40 could be found a soil life expert, heaps of artists, a horticulturist, architect, a few grandmothers, a professional Permaculturist, and another Japan-addict like myself.


Here's Shannon, helping me model the sign that tells me where we are. This one got herself a nice Japanese husband. Maybe my turn is next...

Barry Mcfee, Cecilia, and creative Pizza Oven

The event was impeccably organized by the Veggie Village Maestro, Barry Mcfee. Barry is one of those Engineers that the whole world wants, so it was wonderful staying with him and his dear wife Frances, and hearing all their stories of life lived out in exotic locations.
It took me about half-a-minute after meeting Barry at the airport to guess his profession. Engineers are my favorite people: concise, relaxed, yet accurate. They happily do the groundwork required to make things succeed, while the rest of us skip the little things like confirmation phone calls, etc saying 'She'll be right, mate". But she won't.
Whats the best thing about engineers? Maybe its their flexible attitude to the surprises that life insists upon dishing out. Engineers, like ideal Permaculturists, go with how reality IS, rather than how we think it SHOULD be.

Barry, you were an inspiration.


And I loved your old Citroen.

Permaculture Keyhole garden at Veggie Village

Veggie village is the neatest community garden I have come across, and I've seen them all over the planet. Neatest of the pretty: neat and dull doesn't count.

Reed bed design by artist Glenda Hennig

I especially loved this man-made 'creek' that the volunteers reconstructed from a diverted spring and swamp. Its almost Japanese, the natural placement of rocks, reeds and flow. And how is this for a good story: the reeds get almost too thick by the end of the season, and that's when the lady artist who created all this says 'Harvest time", and turns them into handmade paper.


What did participants think?

"Most enlightening. I loved the possum theory i.e. 'The problem is the solution'".
Linesse

"When you were born, the world made room for a little more fancy - love your approach while providing vital info".
J& D

"I loved your positivity and I will create a garden! I also loved your Japanese-ness. If you have any nice wwoofers who want to stay in Noosa, give them my address. If my garden isn't established yet, they can couch-surf!"
Shannon

Well, I really hope they find a way to invite me back next year.
For now, I'll make do enjoying the 'before' and 'after' balcony garden photos that have started trickling in from the participants. That's the desert.