Gardening and horti therapy

Just did an hour of gardening and mowing with the hand-mower. On these chilly days, it certainly pays to be active.

So I started thinking about all the different muscles you use when you garden.

There's the bending over and pulling the weed out muscles, and the pushing the mower propellant bits, and the dragging the rake doosy whatsits and the pulling the green bin thing em a jigs,  the carrying the mulch and tonnes of other jobs that need energy and muscle power.   And your brain wafts off in to vague out land, which has got to be good for you.      

On the topic of horticultural therapy, here is a photo of my favourite pet, Nibbles the cockatiel enjoying his freedom, before he decided it was time to come home for lunch.    The bird eagerly alighted on my hand, when I found him tired and hungry, masticating on a pile of woodchips, in the next door's front garden.  Tis an intelligent bird who knows where his bread is buttered.

Sorry, but taken with a less than ideal mobile phone camera.
Birds aren't noted for staying still!

One more list

Wow, I'm really on a roll. This is my second blog for today! And this is another list to add to the last one. Oh dear, us greenies really love our lists don't we!

When keeping it real in the garden, I suggest you always bear in mind these dot points:

1. Air/Plant/Soil Protection (Contamination, Erosion, Compaction)
2. Stormwater (diverting away from drains to raingarden, standard garden, rainwater tank)
3. Biodegradability and reusability and recyclability of materials to avoid waste
4. Reduction in use of resources overall
5. Shade/Wind/Ventilation/Heat Island effect - permaculture aspects
6. Maintenance and overall social sustainability 
7. Companion planting (like conditions for like), appropriateness and longevity of plants
8. Do plants require fertilisation, pest treatment at regular intervals etc?
9. Habitats, habitats, habitats 
10. Watch out for environmental weeds which are our second most serious problem, aside from land-clearing. 

And that's all I can think of today.

Some Googling or Doodling Ideas about the Real Outdoors

On the topic of the real outdoors, I thought I would share what are some topics we can google, doodle or brood upon.

Now the first ones to be doodled over are:

Habitat Plantings/Bog Gardens/ Exotics - Natives - Indigenous Plants  
These all are supportive of biodiversity and thus wild-life conservation.

Productive Planting
Try fruit trees on your nature strip, provided there's not alot of pollution on your street.  Vegie plants can look artistic interspersed with sedums, marigolds, echiums, and plants with mixed colours and foliage.  Never forget your companion planting guide.  Sustainable Gardening Australia's website and booklets for sale, are very useful for this topic. Also, check out Van Leuwen Green's website - talk about a wonderland vegie garden.

Raingardens, Wetlands, Swales, Buffer Strips (in addition to Rain Water Tanks)  
These all act as stormwater purifiers or water diverters so these can occur.

Permeable Paving  Surfaces
Stepping stones, ground covers, crazy and random paving, Lilydale or Dromana topping (fine gravelly surface which does need topping up) plus commercially made permeable surfaces which can support car-parks, driveways and general pedestrian areas.  These divert 'stinky stormwater' away from the drains and the house and also perform a filtering role too.


Roof Gardens and Vertical Walls
On a previous posting I mentioned putting in a roof garden on my small chicken shed, as experimentation.  I am going to have to do some more work and not to worry, as nothing will be wasted ... err... the weed mat can be used in the garden, and I will replace it with a more effective filter layer.  I will also need to attach another waterproofing layer.  You cannot neglect the waterproofing on a green roof.  The poor chook doesn't like the plip plopping drips in front of her nesting box ... no sirree.  Just as well I started small!

Lawn and lawn substitutes such as ground covers
Poor old lawn can get bad-press.  The fact is having a lawned or ground-covered area is much more beneficial for the planet than a decking.  A small area can be hand-mowed and you can keep it small and go for some other permeable areas mentioned above, such as cobblestones and grass interspersed.


So sustainable landscaping can mean lots of options apart from the standard lawn and border planting set-up.

Don't forget the slogan:  Out with the Outdoor Room and In with the Real.  As Ali G would say, let's keep it real.

Any room for orangutans with the outdoor room?

You open a glossy magazine or real estate pages what you typically see is lots of greys, tans, and neutral facades with their mono textural renders, and perhaps one facing has some shingling or lattice like detailing added to create visual interest to break the monotone look. So you take a walk through the interior with its chrome finishes sparkling in all directions. The first thing I notice is how extremely neat and uncluttered it all is. Next observation: why not study where the light falls to decide whether the home is 5 or 6 star rating.  Then, you get to the outside and the first thing you think is- Geeh Whiz, the Outdoors are as tidy as the Indoors.  In this modern world with outsourced cleaners and everything done for us, it's not surprising that the view outside is as controlled and contrived as the one inside.  Everything is so shiny looking, every where you look.  You'd be surprised to see any bird droppings anywhere.

So, next, the eye alights on the timber which sprawls in all directions.  Methinks the decking might be spotted gum, red iron bark, sugar gum or locally milled blackbutt. They are meant to be sourced from sustainable sources from within Victoria, or perhaps another Australian state. This could mean reclaimed timber from farms, recycled from industry or sourced from a plantation. What else do these timbers have in common? They come at a premium price, approximately two to three times the price of timber sourced from the third world (in most cases from an old growth forest). Meanwhile the ongoing push is to install outdoor screening, walls, flooring, and other structures.

Now can the reader see the problem that presents itself?  Unless prices of sustainable wood can come down significantly what are we going to see? I leave it to the reader to decide whether we can afford to keep promoting outdoor rooms at the rate we are doing, and what might be the offshoot of speaking of outdoor rooms as sustainable. I don't know the word that means the opposite of serendipitous. Unexpected bad
result. Often a well intentioned marketing campaign ends up having the opposite result.  It's only the big name promoters with their big name clients who can afford to use these 'safe' timbers on a large scale.

Next up will try to source figures of how much habitat supporting merbau and other old growth timbers are getting in to the country compared with five to ten years ago. Watch out lovely orangutans, the Outdoor Room installers are moving in.

Up the Beanstalk - Put A Second Story on Earth?

Reading 'Cradle to Cradle' (highly recommended bestseller by M Braungart & WMcDonough)  and their section on the role of Ants in making the world a better place reminds one that without a living eco-system how can the Bees and Butterflies and Ants do their jobs of keeping living things in production, how can Beetles do their clean up jobs, how can Ants eat dead things, and do their job of growing important fungi, how can Worms till the soil, feed the Birds, who are also pollinators, and seed distributors?  These vital little critters need soil, gardens to do all of this.  This hearkens one to the question : why are the proponents of the Outdoor Room so keen to downsize nature in our already built up cities?  I think if they had their way they would build a second floor on to earth, and construct a fake bean stalk to get us there.

Tips for Avoiding Common Eco Garden Errors

These are a few little tips which can help contribute to healthier gardens and world :

• Bring in new top-soil only if absolutely necessary. Better to use what's on site, or raise the garden bed using compost or a three way mix but make sure it has compost built in to it. Remember, it's the living critters in your garden which help with nutrient uptake, not the empty top-soil.  Soil that's already on site is precious. 

• Avoiding digging unnecessarily in the garden (releases carbon sequestered in the top-soil, so unnecessary digging is a big no no.)  Also see my first post about gardening, over hard-scaping.

• Remove large items like cars, green refuse bins from the garden to avoid soil compaction. 

• Using a more eco-easy weed-killer like glyphosphate on your weeds a couple of days after it rains or after you've water (don't waste your time on the lifeless drought-tormented plant as it won't be very receptive).

• Using the weed-killer on the plant while the weed is still young (make sure it's applied to the leaves and stems)   

• Do investigate a plant to check if it has weedy tendencies before planting.  Remove weed trees like common desert ash and plant one which isn't prone to spreading to other properties.  Remove the seeds and flower heads from plants eg mint, agapanthus before they can spread. Weeds         are  one  of  Australia's  biggest environmental  problems aside  from  land-clearing!

•  Fertilise only when you have to and only use organics, if you can.Google what fertilisers do to our creeks, ground-water and seas.

• Finally research sediment control when doing new landscaping. Try to avoid sediments, chemical fertilisers and pollution getting in to drains.  Use sediment control sausage bags which stop these draining away to the wrong places eg your vegie garden beds, and lay down protective plastic in key posies etc.          

         PS The picture was taken at lovely Mt Macedon 2010.

Arid designs can be pretty too

Now, I do need a decent drink. 

We’re about to go away for a short trip to Sydney and while half of the travelling party are busily watering the plants before we leave, not so,  in my winter wonderland of a sustainable garden, where there is very little to be done watering wise. I have to admit I’ve been really ignoring watering the celery!  And I have been known to neglect the peach tree, a heinous act because it produced the most divine fruit known to man, but that was before I started my sustainable landscape design course.   

Aridity does not equal ugly! The trick is to select different colour tones and foliages to add visual interest that thrive on drought and neglect.  The plants hardly required fertilising (which can cause pollution to our ground-water and detriment to our creeks, acquatic life etc). So I have a few of all of these: Adenanthos sericeus (the beautiful Albany Woolly bush which can go to 3m), Ficinia nodosa (knobby club rushes, a rain garden plant to 1m),   Isopogon dubius  (not so dubious about the rose cone flowers), one Leptospermum petersonii (lemon scented tea tree to 3m), Libertia peregrinans (rhizomatous perennial),  Leucospermum patersonii (spreading bush with orange sunburst flowers) plus herbs such as basil, a silvery curry plant, vegies such as celery,  spring onions spinach and sprawling ground cover sedums that add gorgeous hues and cover spots where weeds would grow.  The Telopea corroboree (Waratah) is not doing too well as it's got singed by our 35 degree days too many times. The garden started off with a two tone mulch swirl reminiscent of an aboriginal painting with its contrasting earth tones, but with time the swirl has dissipated.   We chose mulch from a recycled timber source. Best to use the larger variety that doesn't blow away! 

To avoid weeds, try a weed mat before planting, that degrades over time.  Wish I had used one, but over time the weeds are starting to slow down.  When weeding or spraying, wait a couple of days after the rain, when the roots are regaining their mojo.  Being wet, the roots will also dislodge easier.