Balcony gardens in Europe

A change of scenery
My laptop and I realized we could do a few month's work without being tied to Melbourne. We took up the generous invitation of a writer friend, and set of, first to Angers, France.

My Friend's house, a typical Renaisance castle. He has, it seems, written quite a lot of books.

Inspired by our bedrooms: old ideas for low-energy keeping warm in winter, drawn from the safety of French summer for this month's Dengon Net Permaculture column.

A neighbour, the Medieval castle of the Duke of Angers. Earlier, grander, and more forbidding,
The Angers Castle garden is built into the fortress wall, up high to get the sun. Castles could spend years under seige, vicotry would depend not on the strength of the Knights of the realm, but on the gardeners to keep everybody fed.
In this garden, something is missing. Its the whole continant of the Americas. No tomatoes or capsicum, no corn. No smoking.
The Vinyard, inside the fortress walls.
Back at our castle, in time for dinner. The family from next door have gardened there for generations, and brought homemade absinthe to share over dinner. Genuine, and illegal only if you sell it, absinthe is made with wormwood, a silvery feathery plant that I love. The Liquor has a sunny, medowy fragrance. Biting the plant will make you wince with its bitterness.


From the streets of our tiny provincial town.
This is the fringe of a carpark, I wonder who botheres to tend it each year?

In Paris, even my tiny hotel room had a micro-balcony garden, the building opposite also dripped with well-tended window boxes


The sight of this couch sets of imaginings for a sheltered, upholsered verhandah garden. The starry cascade light would be perfect, swaying in fragrant night breezes beside us.
Shade and birdsong are included on this balcony, and glimpses of its lovely inhabitant and carer


Outside Anges Castle I saw this clever water-catching carport cover. They even bothered to communicate to us why it was designed this swooping way - see the water droplet.



I stayed in the suburbs of paris, with wonderful Servas hosts, Bryan the organist and his beauful wife Miyoko. Bryan is beautiful too. His neighbours all have built-in balcony gardens. Promising to keep them well-maintained is part of the contract when they move in.

Rubbish, including kitchen scraps, goes into a chute, and dissapears from the planet. Or so you may be lead to think. When I talk about urban worm composting, people look puzzled. They are a virgin market, waiting for fulfilment. So much good work cut out and waiting for us to do, in this tired old world.

Tea in the town, with our convivial and talented chef.

Its a kind of 'egde' garden, different visitors leave their mark with plastic monkeys, love notes.

More photos can be viewed at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cecilia_macaulay/

Enjoy

Buoyancy Permaculture courtyard renovation

The plan is that come summer, this garden renovation will have visitors will feel that life can be like a jewel-box, full of surprises. I've chosen the perfumed, the pretty, and the delicious, with creepers such as star jasmine and passionfruit doubling as clothing for pipes, gas meters, whatever wasn't there for its looks. The garden looking pretty good even now, with most plants merely infants. Silvery grey green foliage, blue, purple and yellow flowers are the colors I'm restricting it to, so it all feels 'of a piece'.

Plant Selection:

Wormwood because it is silvery-silky and pretty, and to attract the green fairy sprit. I want to see if it will repel bugs from the nearby strawberry pots, ...we will see. No straw for these berries, but mongolian horsehair mulch...make the most of what youv'e got. Since at Buoyancy, lunch comes ready-made from the wonderful Tofu Shop, I've used instantly appealing edibles such as strawberrys, chives, and a lime tree. Things that don't need cooking. Organic limes are $2 each, and life goes better with limes.

The bead curtian is there to feel rainy when its hot, for playfulness, and for its friendly tinkling.

Existing plants were re-arranged, so the tall, thin ones could feel elegant in tall, thin pots. Folksy, kitchen herbs were put in the reclaimed half-barrel.

The brooms got taken out of the splendid pot they were sitting in. The loveliest is out, at hand, inviting people to use it, cheering up a sunless spot. The other brooms and mops are unobtrusively awaiting a new hanging system, maybe out of sculpted wire....Go Frank!

Most pots got a blend of Debco organic potting mix, and well-composted manure from Sheridan Sheeps Pty Ltd. Thank-you Andrew. The natives didn't because they adapted themselves to low fertility, and thats what they like best.

This basket was unraveling, ratty, and on its way to the rubbish bin. Mikoto put it back together with plaited straw. It will make a fine, free planter for a couple of years. Leftover straw was chopped up small and used as mulch. The taro was donated from my back garden, where it never got enough sun or water. No point in being the proud owner of an unhappy plant. Now its in its element, under the asian water feature.

With existing pots all the same size, it was starting to look like a nursery. So I introduced a bit of wildness for variety. Frank drilled extra holes for drainage - I think thats why the original residents of these empty concrete pots had long departed this world. No drainage, no air. No air, bad (anaerobic) microbes win, plant dies.

Collaborative co-creation by : Maki, Jun, Mikoto, Frank, Stuart from Fat Elvis, nephew Joshua (Debs, not mine, and Tomoko, under the direction of Cecilia) . Thank-you everyone. May the garden unfold into unexpecteded wonders, and so may we!

Before

balcony garden art for buoyancy foundation

This painting for the Buoyancy Foundation took:

*three meters worth of Acrylic paint

*weeks of floorspace in my loungeroom,

*reems of 80's music downloads from i-tunes

* a lot of vision. 3 meters of murkey undercoat for 90% of the painting time is not very self-encouraging.

You can see the whole thing on the balcony of Buoyancy Foundation, in Punt Road, just before Richmond Station

Enjoy. I did... eventually.

luxury worm farm for gorgeous compost

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wormfarm art by Cecilia
Possums, birds, water, all the usual wormfarm visitors.

The drawing is marker pen on photocopy paper, printed into a waterproof sticker.

Lucky worms. Loved worms.

Ladybugs at the show

Jane Davenport is on a mission to create one million Frogologists, and she just might do it.

I offered myself up to help her out at the Melbourne Flower and garden show, hoping some of her irrepressable, generative spirit would rub off onto me. She is all those things, plus sparklingly funny, and a graceful, raunchy user and abuser of the English language. "Discombobulating".



Photo by Jane Davenport

My house guest Mai Shimizu came along too - the dream she is chasing is to be a photogapher of fashion and flowers, just as Jane has done. Together things went 'click'. Of course: Mai too has big dreams, endurance, ability to find and savor small pleasures and treasures , and all the typical japanese virtures. Jane knows a good thing when she sees it, and took my Mai off to the Sydney garden festival, and Mai was beaming, brimming with happiness. There is nothing lovelier to see than someone you like feeling they are getting closer to their dream. Not ladybirds, not anything. Go Mai!

Blossom photos by Mai Shimizu

being a permaculture passive watering designer

No tapwatering, no problem, definitly no reason to let things die
The soil IS a tank


Replacing concrete with brick pathways like these, the water seeps into the ground, instead of swishing by dying plants down the stormwater drains. I found this charming place in Aukland: block by block, part of the street was taken over by this fellow who's hobby was laying this meandering reclaimed brick. That was the 50's Like attracts like, and it is still an enclave of creativity, deliciousness and uniqueness.

Its said that by May , drought-unaware Melbounians will be forbidden from watering their gardens. Of course its not true - we'll be forbidden from watering with Tap Water. Of course we can water with what we catch and store ourselves. Of course we can use our grey water. Except we aren't good designers yet, and don't have anyone to show us HOW.

If you know of someone who can re-arrange my bricks in this wild way, please introduce me.

Permaculture cuisine for Saturday's party - cooking day tomorrow.

These delectable party snacks by Mai and Aya, with help from Stephanie Alexander's cookbook, would qualify as 'Permaculture food'. Here is why....

The cottage cheese was made by Aya while she was WWOOFing at the Holmgren's - she even milked the goat. Parsley from our garden was added, and chives from the fridge, which made us wish we had planted more chives in our own garden : motivation preceeds action. The breadcrumbs were made by toasting and crushing old Philipa's bread, which reminded us to buy the best and use every little bit: turn leftovers into breadcrumbs BEFORE we need them (and buy more airtight containers). The olive oil is made in Australia (local) by organic farmers, bought in bulk (no jars to recycle), and the rest of it sits in the former laundry, for guests to decant in their own empty bottles they bring along - nothing for the recycling bin.

Creating just one permaculture dish can touch many areas of your cooking life.

"You try to pick up one thing by itself, and find it is connected to the rest of the universe"

Thank-you Mai for the cooking and photo. Thank-you Su for happy goats.

Fiddly food isn't worth it usually, but three of us did bits of the task, and it was effortless. Permaculture: the art of making things worth it.

Thank-you Jun, Yes, I would love to have you over tomorrow and make Okara-ryori together.('kara' is waste made from the tofu-making process,but can be reclaimed deliciously)