Sydney Harbor Gardens - Pink and Green in East Balmain

I've come to a lovely interlude of my Year of Living Homelessly - house-sitting at a jungle-like home on Sydney Harbor, until mid-September.

   

I don't know how Helen managed to find me. Visually, we have identical taste in plants - I restrict myself to a garden of these three contrasts: 

• Pink on Green 

• Light green on dark green on light green
  

• Fluffy or heart shaped or dangling and lavish or massive - a party of distinctive foliage

Do this, and it will come out beautiful (To Cecilia and Helen, anyway)

Recycled tin can garden. Illustration by Cecilia

As the earth-garden areas are all in shade, Helen's edibles are in sunny pots, watching the harbor - guava, strawberry. 

I could make her hibiscus into tea, dig up her bamboo shoots and ginger roots for stir fry, and infuse the cream for my crepes with her lavender.

But maybe I won't. 

I think Red Shiso, that wonderful drinkable Japanese herb, would be a perfect friend for her existing plants. Maybe next summer.

Its true that I like diversity and change. Most mornings, a different Ten Story high 'residence' appears at my balcony.  But I never get a chance to make friends, that's the downside.

Upstairs I have a choice of five balcony garden seating areas from which to have my breakfast. 

There are another five courtyard gardens to choose from, less open and sparkly, so I prefer these. Add to the list two interior gardens, and a large pot plant population. 

Friends everywhere!

Although Helen doesn't specialize in Organic or in Edibles, if cities and citizen suddenly needed to feed themselves,  she could have a successful garden going in a year or two.  She could manage a whole neighborhood to succeed, I suspect.

Its just a tiny step from turning an able gardener into a Sustainable food gardener. 

But turning your average sustainability enthusiast into a successful food gardener takes years and years. 

It did in my case.

Bit by bit my garden and its casualties got me to face up to the realities: That a healthy garden springs from healthy soil, and a healthy character (or the love of gardening elicits health in our characters)

My balcony garden taught me these things:

• Pretending there isn't a problem won't fix things, 

• Procrastinate, and there isn't a tomorrow (for the poor plants)

• Take shortcuts, and your destination disappears.  

Just being in a clear house like Helen's, where each draw is filled with everything you need, and nothing you don't, is keeping my mind decluttered, ready for good permie action. 

Please send me blessings for a productive, happy spell here in East Balmain. And introduce me to your Sydney friends, so I don't get too lonely, here with all these plants. 

Self-expression Sydney continues, with bonus kitchen sink gardens

Rosellas snack on eucalyptus blossom on the roadside

The story of Susan Street Anandale and its treasures continues, as I spent the last week here, staying with my brother John.

 

So the question was, 'Why is this street beautiful?" 

One answer is, because its nourishing. For the bird, for starters.

Each doorstep-scape is different from any other.  Yet the street is consistent in being engaging,  invested in by each resident. An interesting, fully-functioning family.

The fluffy pink eucalyptus blossoms make me happy in the most Cecilia-ish way possible. They co-ordinate with everything I own, everything I am. 

People love things that look like them. We just do.

Yet imagine a whole street of frilly Cecilia stuff,  a whole neigbourhood. I remember once eating a whole bag of fairy floss, and thats how sick it would make me. 

I'd stop being special too, being a surprise for somebody else to come upon.

Now, I would never have this geometric, black and white, metal-ridden decor at my doorstep, with construction-vehicle Yellow. The pot plant just doesn't DO enough to earn its rent - so chaste.
Yet I am so delighted to see this tableaux in my street,  a stylish little world in one meter square.

Peeking down into the basement kitchen sink, the yellow and chrome theme continues - look at the cleaning cloth.
I love people who make their own world, like this.

 

Look at the purposeful nature of this West-facing, hot afternoon garden. 

They didn't just do what was convenient, they did what works.  

Instead of buying a heap of different plants, with characters that cancel each other out, they restricted themselves to classical roses, varied the color and height, and will become experts at making roses happy, productive and pest-free.

They didn't pretend that everything will be fine with the pots sitting on the tiles, or on mosquito-breeding saucers. They lifted them up so the water doesn't pool, so that the breeze dispels the heat from the floor, and the soil life and roots can stay cool, transpiring and happy.

They didn't buy the cheapest pots, or fashionable tapering pots, with their plant-unfriendly narrowness.  They invested in something they can use for decades. They made the effort to re-pot each plant, not this 'hanging petticoat' plastic-pot-inside-real-pot business. 

Bigger pots would have been better, but they don't yet know this, and the roses might just be fine. Its a sunny, often-passed, well-attended to spot. 

Life-giving success often looks beautiful.

"I Boris. I from Russia.
What you want here?".
Burly cat guards veranda.

Now we are back to the house at the end of the street, the most edible of them all, and my favourite. Look at the springy organic wrought iron - little knobs individually coaxed into being, like onion flowers meandering their way out of the soil.

 

The aztec look of this little garden is a deft representation of...

 

...the bloke who make it.

Meet Mario the craftsman, from Paraguay, who came out to say Hello.

And then invited us in for tea.

The story of what I found at Mario's house will be for next time, but for now, here is the kitchen sink. 

Beautiful, as expected.

Every beautiful balcony garden has a beautiful kitchen sink, Its the rule that wrote itself.

If you want a lovely permaculture balcony, the sink is where it starts and ends up, so give yourself permission to put your beauty-creating efforts there. 

The garden will follow.

Worlds most astonishing Indoor farm - Tokyo Business District

Conference room, Head office, Pasona Group Inc.

With all my Japan projects bedded down for the winter, I set out for some sightseeing in my final weekend in Tokyo (Dec 4th) with a visit to the head office of the Parsona Group Inc.



Pasona is a stroll away from Tokyo station, a kind of urban desert of towering concrete and glass.
But it looks like someone at the company decided "Life is for spending, lets do something astonishing" and the result is impeccable, improbable 'urban farm'. Plants are grown mostly under human-supplied light and nourishment, mostly indoors.

I saw lush-looking eggplants, giant daikon radish and beans, with cucumbers and roses climbing the walls. 200 kinds of plants are grown, disease free, all without pesticide. When your a farm isolated in urban concrete, there is nothing really to bug you.


Their full-sized ricefield has three harvests a year. You can see the 'autumn' crop drying in the background.
They brighten the 'HELF' lights and drop them down closer to the paddy as the plants desire - about 5 lux most months, up to 10 lux when the rice kernels are ripening.

The neighbouring building is an energy company. Maybe they got mates rates. I've drunk tea and eaten sweets flecked with real gold, but if you did your calculations, a bowl of this rice would outdo such opulence, easily.


My favorite part of the whole building is this tiny 'willow fence' that slows down the circulating rice paddy water as it gets close to the inlet. The clay-soil edges of the paddy are planted with a natural cover of brave little weeds, but the rice itself grows on palm fibre.

Sakuma-san

Here the agricultural consultant, Sakuma-san, tells me how they make it all work. When I ask what his dream job is, he says to be a regular farmer, under a regular sky, with all the disasters it entails. The predictability is heaven for the rice, but humans need more challenge to flourish.

Matsumoto-san

The office staff all share the task of caring for the 'office pets', the plants. They water, remove withered leaves, and havest the produce for the staff cafeteria upstairs. I chatted with Matsumoto-san and asked if she was a farmer. No, a geologist. The cafe, she tells me, is just delicious.

Audry-san

Pasona is a Temp agency, where young ladies come to be sent out for employment. A young, irresistable Audrey Heburn is their image girl.


Quiz: What color light does lettuce like to eat? Why?


The public cafe, a forest of hanging baskets.



One of the meeting rooms. The furniture is elegant and 'wholemeal' with its raw edges and pencil marks showing. The staff are are proud to say that the glass tabletops were recycled from the old office partitions, and that the floor is made of forest-thinnings. The entire building is a retrofit, and infused with 'green' virtue-points, as listed in their PR materials.


Hydroponic lettuce floating on polystyrene

These plants requested a little more breeze.

Roses love light. In this season, early winter, the plants on the exterior balconies are mostly climbing roses, braving the cold, thin but elegant.



The tall young Japanese are not particularly aware of any food crisis going on. Urban farm's educational posters fill everyone in a bit.
Above are their ideas of of how to solve the food crisis.
The more closely you read it, the more interesting it gets.
They admit its a bit uncertain if all these solutions listed will work.
So, my goal for next year is to have fun events at Parsona, and watch them change that list, with Permaculture in big letters.


The Japanese are astonishing.

I'm showing you these pictures in the Permaculture spirit, that is, that you can find something positive from this story of Pasona, something that gets you into action.
Creating a new culture is hard. Nobody can get it all right in one go. Its okay to do amazing things that have big flaws. Have a lovely vision and make it real the best you can. Others may come along later, get inspired, and finish the work you couldn't.

No Worries Concrete at Asabas Permaculture Garden

The secret to laying concrete seems to be this:
Don't worry.

Just like making a cake

Living here and running workshops with the incandescent Asaba-san, I started seeing that most of us worry INSTEAD of acting.

Asaba never worries. She just gets into action, doing whatever preparation is needed for whatever festivity she has freely chosen to dive into.

Today, it was cement.


Plus stringing up some Summer Vines, and a practical lesson on reppotting orchids. Happy Participants, happy plants, Happy Asaba, watching her garden transform itself. Just ask Cecilia over to Run workshops, teach her 'Don't Worry', and it all happens.
A few adjusments, compromizes and mistakes will be made along the way. Don't worry.
That's the deal with creativity, after all.

Tempting gourd and cucumber vines

onto the bridge with a tasty ball of string.

Guests came from around the corner, and around the country.

Mrs Morimoto and the gang collecting Fuyoudo soil from our mountain.

The wonderful Morimoto family drove the 7 hours from their old farmhouse in Gifu to attend, all on their tempura-oil powered vehicle.

The elegant Nishibayashi Family drove 5 hours from Nara.

Guys, that is such a complement!

Bento lunchbox lunch in our back, back garden at Shyomyoji Temple.

No Chairs, no wrappers, no bills, no worries. So long as you decide to enjoy cooking your bento box lunch the night before. Inspiring company and settings help.


We started the morning with a presentation introducing the wonders of Permaculture, and how it can make life riveting.
We saw David Holmgren's ingenious passive energy house,
the beautiful universe of Rainbow Valley Farm,
and the inspirational story of Famer Iwata, who really doesn't DO anything to his kiwi orchid now - he set it up to care for itself. And we can do that too, with our lives.

After lunch and garden creation time, we ended the day with a presentation on balcony garden design - tricks to get yourself into action, get rid of the uglies, and surround yourself with only things you love. Without designing love into it, balcony gardening is just too hard to be worth it, or to succeed.
Just like life, maybe.

Ready to build on the foundation we created in Workshop #4 last week - the Daku wall.

This wall solves a few problems

• How to get rid of the unattractive yet useful cinderblocks
• How to keep Daku the dachshund out of the edible garden
• How to keep the raised beds raised.

Don't cry Daku. Weve planned a special little digging spot for you, where all the interesting composting and hidey-holes will be happening. You will love it.