Ilka White came to teach us and brought skills she has honed for over thirty years. Her weaving and braiding skills, her technical and creative skills. All thrown together to create something from nothing, something from very little. Braided Rag Rug made by Ilka White...
This article first appeared in Sanctuary Magazine, the 55th edition (with a few changes made here for my blog). A big thank you to editor Anna Cumming for commissioning this piece for I really love writing about the things I really love. Living fences: Using plants to...
All year round our greenhouse keeps our household protected and in comfort. It serves multiple functions: a place for drying clothes all year round. A pocket of warm air to heat the passive areas of our house such as the lounge room and bathroom. It’s where I...
We are offering a tour of our burgeoning permaculture farm followed by afternoon herbal teas and home made treats on Sunday 15th December 2pm -4pm. Please go to our Workshop tab to book a ticket. We are on 15 acres in Blampied between Daylesford and Ballarat. We began...
Ancona We have chickens after a four-year break. First, we needed to build our home, the farm stay, the piazza shed. We needed to plant thousands of trees, and grasses, and fruit orchards and berries and chestnuts and oaks, and hazelnuts and our kitchen garden. There...
Come oh come! I will be hosting my first workshop here at our eco property in Blampied with my dear friend Nicola Cerini. Apply Images to Plywood Saturday the 8th June from 1-4pm, $95 pp. We will begin with a tour of our property: kitchen garden propagation,...
I'm letting all the summer tomato plants rot in the garden. Why take them out? I want all the organic matter to remain, to decompose so that I can dig it into the spring soil. In spring lots of tomato plants will self germinate and I will transplant them into Orto...
There is so much work being done. My motivation levels continue to be high. My energy levels rise and then fall. This is a brilliant time of the year, summer is so bountiful I want to make the most of it. I take enormous pleasure from using ingredients growing free...
There is a list and sketches on a drawing we made. A drawing of our land and our dreams. Pigs on the south paddocks. Native wind breaks to the west, south and east. Establish a wetland and create habitat around it. Plant oaks and nuts to provide long term food...
I have been thinking about our garden design for months. I studied Horticulture at Burnley and completed three wonderful subjects which opened my mind to a broader variety of plants. For a long time Indigenous plants had been my biggest focus and now it is a focus I...
At the Lost Trades fair in Kyneton, Victoria, artisans and craftswomen and men are once again celebrated. And you could see from the hundreds and hundreds of people there how much communities crave the slow, the heartfelt, personal, intimate and highly skilled world...
One of the projects we did not foresee the need for when we first moved into our home was a rain garden project. Back in 2003 we were thinking about fruit trees, raised vegetable beds, deciduous vines, native trees, solar hot water and solar electricity. I wish we...
The leaves have all dropped. The path is decorated with their crunch and winter light now falls gently in. After 10 years of growth, the grape vine on the west side of our home is abundant and verdant in summer. It barely lets a drop of sunshine in, which is perfect...
On returning home from work I sometimes felt a deep despair...the garden beds, even when heavily mulched, struggled in the heat. I would come home to dry soil and wilting plants. Even with an automatic watering system moisture loss was very high on hot summer days...
I have learned that I must be prepared for summer early. I grow most of my crops in the summer months, I purchase bags of seed raising mixture, and packets of seeds, I sow and sow in punnets, and transfer the punnets into my greenhouse. I water once a day until the...
The backyard was pretty bare when we came to inspect the house. Grass and a few Camellias.....we planted Acacia mearnsii (Black Wattle) and other species which I need to go back and identify....thanks to this fast growing tree, which is now 11 years old, we have had a...
The greenhouse, was added to the north facing facade of our home to bring warmth to the living areas, the study and front bedroom. It does this beautifully and has alleviated the need to have a heater in our bedroom and study and diminished heating needs in the living...
A brick fence/wall, especially a high one, can be great at helping you create a warm microclimate for subtropical plants and can wind protect them too. However in our case our low brick fence was reducing our productive space as it prevented sunlight from reaching the...
I hoped for a garden cupboard, I hoped to be able to walk up, see clearly what's on offer, grab and walk away, so I asked Ralf if he could build us a garden cupboard which could double as a chicken house. And this he did. On the right hand side is the chook house,...