Red Bubble orders for Christmas

Red Bubble has just listed order deadlines for anyone wanting to order stuff for Christmas, here they are:
Calendars, Cards, Stretched Canvas, Posters and all Prints (Framed, Laminated, Mounted, Matted and Laminated) Dec. 14
T-shirts: Dec. 7
So get ordering!

We had a lovely Christmas party on Sunday, with a fabulous array of food- (Who made that berry pastry thing? It was amazing!!) and a great turn out, so thank-you all for turning up with plates in hand.
I forgot to take my camera but Marijka may have a few snaps to share.

And here they are... Some beauties on the day of the feasting..


Onion flower thriving in Edain's and Justin's patch..


Hollyhock down by the pond. An infiltrator..

Water iris down by the pond. Best season yet.


Dianella down by the pond. A fabulous show this year..


(And the berry pastry thingy was another of Jane's gourmet baking).

Self sufficiency blog

This is Daniel Moss's food growing blog http://www.growingourown.wordpress.com/. It's full of great info and links, and our own little gardens star with a photo too.

Thanks to Ros for talking to Daniel and connecting us with him and his project. We are part of a movement here in Melbourne (even though we tend to mostly just focus on our own little gardens), but it's still nice to be connected!

Christmas party

Our Christmas/Summer Solstice/ Hannukah/ End Of Year/ Just Because Party will be on Sunday 30th November at 12.00pm at the gardens. Please come along and bring a plate...with some food on it.
See you then!

Sprout markets

New markets starting up at Sprout.

Nov. Working Bee and Grants

By now you probably all know we had no luck on the Landcare grant, but the Community Volunteers grant is still a possibility, they will hopefully let us know before Christmas.
Next WORKING BEE IS NOW THE 9TH NOVEMBER hope you can all make it.

Happy New Life Garden visit

Here are some images of the fabulous Happy New Life Garden in Lennox St Richmond we visited on Sunday. In a very compact space these gardeners with a mostly Vietnamese heritage are growing an absolute abundancce of produce. We were most struck by their use of vertical space with polystyrene boxes loaded with seedlings packed into every spare corner. It was very inspiring and we all took home plenty of ideas for maximising the use of our space.

...Say,who is that stylish woman in that fabulous tshirt???!!! Where can I get one?

Swapmeet and FGA

The above leaflet is for a new Swapmeet for gardeners to swap excess produce, seeds, cuttings etc and is happening this Saturday (4th Oct) at Smith's Reserve Fitzroy.

Ros and Rebecca attended a public meeting last night of the Food Gardeners Alliance, a new organisation of home and community gardeners concerned about the water restrictions and their impact on food gardening. David Holmgren (of permaculture fame), Clive Blazey from the Diggers Club, Jane Edmanson from the ABC and Helen Tuton from Sustainable Gardening Australia all gave very informative speeches, and the public were able to ask questions at the end. There were also some local and state government representatives there.

David Holmgren believed that growing your own vegetables is one of the most powerful things you can do to save water. This is because when you compare the amount of water needed to grow food on a farm, then packaged and transported and to the supermarket and then to your home....home gardening uses a tiny amount of water.

It is in its early stages, but FGA could become a great lobby group for food gardeners and I urge everyone to check out their website here. (They've also totally coincidentally used one of our tshirt designs to promote their message...GROW Food and save the world!)