Permablitz: creating edible paradise on urban concrete, party-style

The old garden gate

The Permablitz network
When you join the other 800 or so people in the Melbourne Permablitz network, you get to be a kid again. Someone puts their hand up for a garden makeover, some new designers spend a few weeks working it all out, then a mob of us descend on someones garden, leaving it transformed. In this case, concrete courtyard of an inner-city rental.

Cecilia can't resist arranging everyone's colorful lunchtime contributions.
Behind, the after-lunch bath is being drawn. Loam, not foam

Here two of the three Designers hold a conference: Mara, flexing her new PDC (Permaculture Design Certificate) , and Tania, a Permie and graphic designer who discovered she lived next door to Michael's garden.

Here's you host, Michael B Green
Michael B Green is the host of This Mid-may Carlton blitz. To prepare for the day, Michael wacked together these raised bed frames, made from salvaged floorboards from the other neighbour's house, and a close relation to the table we are eating off, also Michael's work. Michael writes for The Age, on themes such as resourceful reclaming, caring for things, and caring for people, and practices what he prints. (see michael's articles here)

Tania the designer/neighbour contemplates the communal lunch (playing teasets)

Making work a party
One dish for humans, the other for the garden. I had to leave early, so can't say how the Gnocci tasted, or how the permablitz turned out. I'll go visit and take some 'after' photos. Around lunchtime. Maybe I'll get lucky.

Australian War Memorial

In honor of Memorial Day here in the US, I've decided to focus on a monument most of us probably aren't familiar with -the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, Australia's capital.The memorial was first conceived after WW I. However, a competition for the design of the structure wasn't completed until 1928. Because of the great depression, the monument then wasn't finished till 1941. The style remains Art Deco which was popular at the time. Housed in the building is also an Australian military museum.interior of the dome above the Hall of Memory. Stained glass depicting the virtues of soldiers surround the space, you can see one of them above. They were completed by Napier Waller, a 1-armed veteran who also did all of the mosiac work here in the hall.The central courtyard.

The cloisters around the pool contain rolls of honors to commemorate the 102,000 soldiers who died in the field throughout the numerous battles Australia has participated in. The rolls list name only, because, as it states, "all men are equal in death".

Top image courtesy of Les Butcher on Flickr.com. All others from wikipedia.org

Gothic balcony gardening photo shoot - looking for edible black plants

Rehearsing costume and light, ready for a Gothic Garden stage set to be assembled

What, I wondered, did young Urbanized Goths do in the day? Maybe what they need is a spot of Gothic balcony Permaculture to perk them up - black roses for turning into fragrant Jam, black snake beans to rip into, glossy eggplants, and then a good swathe of menacing thorny roses, blood red, clambering over the balustrades to keep out marauding possums.


Drawing in black just doesn't work for me. No worries, making a photo would be even more fun, I will meet creative people, and we might be able to have a Gothic feast afterwards.


Can you help me? Here is my beg, borrow, trade or buy wish list:
Black or purple Fruiting plants, full size, dug up:
Eggplant,
black beans,
Potted Avocado,
Pomegranate,
black-stemmed taro,
purple asparagus
blackberries (any left?)
Black, Dark red, dark purple flowering plants
Red flowering roses, thorny preferred.

Pots, to cover in shiny black plastic, and tied with white ribbon

Black pebbles (or somebody to buy them off me after the shoot, cheap)
or Lots of Dark fallen leaves, to cover the bricks,
or - your other good, mysterious idea

From the Gothic Gardening Website

Wrought iron gates, magnificent, to hide the reality of the walls
Black Umbrellas, to hide the rock edging, to give a bat-like menacing feel, or to hang like storm clouds above, for a nice touch of oppression.

Melbourne GPO awash in Umbrellas, by jikon
Other amazing umbrella art on diggphotos

If I'm lucky, a sea monster-like black air conditioning pipe might writhe though the lot.

Artistic and efficient volunteers to help get it all together would be angels (black).

For all your black gardening ideas and advice, there is a substantial and beautiful Gothic Gardening website to direct and inspire you with plant names and uses. If there is enough vivid green, and splashes of white and crimson, it could look captivating. Here is a list of black plants,
but I myself wouldn't like black leaves - too much like bin liners. Fruit is fine, because its glossy. Green emenates life.

Thank-you Amor e Locura for lending me the gorgeous gates

First rose of summer

I was walking home the other day and noticed that the roses are coming out in full force. I guess summer is upon us! I hope everyone has a great weekend and takes some time to smell the roses!

Rando Design Inspiration Friday

This week flew by in a flash! I realize I only posted a few times and for that I apologize but I can only do so much. This weekend is Memorial Day and cross your fingers that I get out of work early! Here are some images that are making me smile.

In honor of Memorial Day, here is a patriotic photo that I took of the Brooklyn Bridge.
Brooklyn Bridge, USA.

This boudoir by Jackson/Aaron looks so sunlit-lovely. I'd love to lie down there with a good book...and a kitty.

I found this designer, Emma Jane Pilkington, in Traditional Homes 20 Young Designers to watch and I'm molto impressed. This painted bed is incredibly beautiful...I'm in awe.

April Tidey, who was on Apartment Therapy yesterday, has such a fun aesthetic mixing modern with traditional. Love the white walls, ceiling and floors in this cottage.

What are your plans this weekend? As usual I'm heading up to the country for some r and r with my parents and then am joined by the beau Saturday evening! I absolutely cannot wait until the Memorial Day Parade (it's my favorite part). There is nothing like a parade in a small town. Have a great 3-day weekend!

Alicia B.

Architectural master 'pieces'

Well you knew it was going to happen someday. Lego has started a new collection called 'Architecture'! You don't know how excited I am: as a kid lego's were just about the only toy I was interested in! Probably the most fun so far are the sets based on Frank Lloyd Wright masterpieces. Released in conjuntion with a show at the Guggenheim (of which there is also a model, seen above) called 'From within Outward' with the help of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation these sets will help young budding architects learn a bit of American Architectural History piece by piece. The show at the Guggenheim looks pretty great too, I need to head up to New York to see it before it closes in August!Also in the series is a BEAUTIFUL (but expensive at $299) set of the Taj Mahal.The Empire state building above and the Seattle Space needle below are just as fantastic and a much more reasonable $20. For nieces, nephews, children -anyone? I can't wait to see what comes out next in the series!

Model at top of the post is of Fallingwater: the Kaufmann's summer home outside of Pittsburgh.

Edible office garden - Map coffee break time

A few minutes walk from Crown Casino, I came across this Very Edible Garden in an unlikely place - corporate headquarters of Map Coffee, backstreets of South Melbourne

Rhubarb lines the boardroom

Redlegged Silverbeet

The Toolshed

If it were my garden (wish!), I would make this Rustic tableaux the entire color scheme: Madonna blue and cardinal red, with green, in cottage-style fragrant flowers to encourage and delighting the edibles. I'd have rich red roses climbing the cyclone wire, and blue daisies & blue forget-me-knots for the bees. Oh, and honey for the coffee. What other mid blue flowers are there? Delphiniums, borage for salads. Bluebells.

They cook up the produce for shared lunches each week in their snazzy Milan-looking kitchen

With a garden like this, you don't need to read their mission statement to know this is the kind of company you'd like to work with, belong to.

Even the car park is delicious. The rusty-red crates are filled with rich soil, mulched and automatically watered, from a massive tank covered in passion fruit vines.

Go Map Coffee!