Blooming and Bold


Without the buzzards and bees

Where would we bee?


A blog by Nicolle Kuna

A blog about sustainable landscaping and some eco-humour and eco-creativity.

Inside this blog we look at everything that is encroaching in to our natural urban landscapes – outdoor rooms (errchkem), weeds, urban noise, excess nutrientsThere’s a bit of art to add extra colour and inspiration. We believe in making sustainability fun - more gaming, less shaming.

Also see website on social marketing for greenies

To contact us – go to the contact us page http://www.converseconserve.com as the contact facility on this blog has been giving us mischief.

Attribution for above garden design goes to

Andrew Jones, talented artist and designer.

view detailsview detailsview detailsview details


Friday 27 January 2012

Sustainable Gardening Design - What is it?

To build or not to build. That is the question.  In my meanderings I came upon some 'outdoor space' videos, where the broadcaster talks up building walls with hedges.  These can be quite good for biodiversity, especially if it's a hedge which attracts pollinators. I was very happy to see this.

Bio-diversity is becoming the buzz word!  This means what we have outdoors should aim to restore the natural balance, and retain symbiotic relationships that all living things have with each other.

Build if you must, but what is de rigeur is:

(1) For those who don't have much space, go for a crazy paving or a  mixed paving and planting area, which can look smart (or rustic) depending on the types of pavers used.  Then have some planters around and trellises for vertical gardening (beans, snow peas, tomatoes), or espaliered fruit trees along fences or plant vines over a pergola for shade.

(2) Allowing for water absorption on-site, and trees

Water can stay on site due to vegetative bio-mass or it can run-off to stormwater pipes (due to hard surfaces, water being deviated from roofs to drains). Run-off causes contamination which also causes algal blooms in our waterways (fertilisers contain nutrients that end up contaminating our rivers, lakes, and ground-water.) (Think Gippsland Lakes - crustacean industry is in the doldrums because of cyanobacteria in the blooms.  Broad acre farming has responsibility in this too, but this is the food most of us eat.) Use organic fertilisers and benign soaps for cleaning surfaces outdoors.  Lawn can capture a lot of run-off too.

(3) Allow for a mix of  trees, bushes, herbaceous plants, grasses and ground-covers for carbon sequestration and shade and greater bio-diversity to attract different types of bees, butterflies, birds which are insect-eaters, nectar-eaters and seed-eaters.

(4) Leave sticks, hollow boughs lying around if you can, to encourage the bigger critters, who will help keep the pests down eg slugs, snails.

(5) Purchasing timber only when you know where it's coming from. If you are unsure where the timber is from, contact your local wildlife group or Green Peace - Good Wood Guide, Friends of the Earth web-site or such like who can give you sustainable sources to buy from. For eg it's better to use a treated pine for your decking and retreat it using an ACQ (less toxic) treatment than to cull Indonesian and Malaysian rain-forests of their rapidly disappearing hardwoods.

If taking down the timber means taking down endangered animals that is irreversible theft from nature! The trees can grow again, but the animals won't, if the parents are dying out.)

(6) Practice companion-planting in your produce garden.  Look up key-words like 'lure plants', crop-rotation, green manure.

Wednesday 11 January 2012

Decking timber is no monkey business

Supply of timber decking is a key issue for this blogger.

Last month I read a very interesting article raising the issue of supply in the timber market for good local product.  From what I am hearing there is product there but we are paying a premium for hardwoods.

This begs the question again re affordability of decking timber that is able to be purchased in Australia which is durable and not deleterious to overseas native forests and habitats.  Merbau/Kwila the most popular decking timber is used in most cases, and this means wildlife habitats in Indonesia, New Guinea, etc are going to be wiped out, if we continue with cutting them down for paper, palm oil and timber.

Another reason for caution when building up and out, our outdoor spaces. Try to source suitable reclaimed timber, or some examples of hardwoods to try are Spotted Gum, Sugar Gum.  Actually, Spotted Gum has a much higher Janka rating than Merbau, so it would last longer.  The other benefit to Australian timbers is that the hues work harmoniously with our landscapes, and the exotic ones tend to look out of place.

Benefits of lawn aka fake turf

http://www.greenlivingonline.com/article/why-lawn-care-green

This is quite a good article on why lawn is actually very good for the earth.
I think lawn deserves to get better press.

The Sustainable Gardening Australia also has a good page entitled
Turf Wars which is hugely informative.

Friday 6 January 2012

The landscape mimicks the land

Blue-green algae in Gippsland lakes and elsewhere are making havoc for local fishing, wild-life, and of course tourism.  Blue-green algae is caused by excess nutrients entering the waterways, due to sewerage run-off and over fertilisation. Our lands grow barren as we turn over crops without practicing traditional crop rotation, companion planting or other permaculture principles. Meanwhile birds and other pollinators head off to greener pastures.  Hence pests become a problem and the bad cycle continues with pesticide use on the rise and land and habitat degradation compounding as a result. The land needs a bit of a rest. 

Similar things are happening at the local urban level, in our back-yards as we are turning them in to mono-cultures resulting from more streamlined gardens, which means the pollinators don't have much to attract them.  Again off the birds and bees go to greener pastures. Urban run-off leaves little water left in the ground, with the water-table needing replenishing after years of drought.  Run-off to creeks, and oceans is on the increase as we continue to build up our back-yards. Fertilisers high with nutrients (phosphorus, nitrogent) leach in to the ground and flow off in to creeks which lead to the sea, again causing blue-green algae blooms, and making eco-systems sick.  I wonder if it is a coincidence that  our Melbourne metropolitan beaches are being rated as 'fair' .

Remember, that our back-yards, though seemingly just our private domain are also an extension of the wider land and our waterways, and we should be much more careful as to how we use them.

Social marketing and ever-greening

As with any campaign position, there is the reverse psychology element, whereby if you tell people to do X, build a permeable garden or a smaller Outdoor room, that they will wish to do the opposite.   We need to look at the spin-offs of what we are promoting.  Designers of outdoor rooms may have started with good intentions, but found that by generating a market for outdoor rooms, they are generating a demand for cheap, unsustainable resources.    

As campaigners, we  need to be aware of the audience we are addressing.  Also be mindful that expressing an opinion against the opponent may come back to bite you.   I know that by writing this blog, I have learned to tone down the things I say, as I don't really want to get up any one's nose, so to speak.  (Some of my earlier blogs were a tad more cynical than necessary.)  Decide whether taking a more neutral or even-tempered approach you bring out more empathy from your audience, rather than getting too carried away, and scaring your audience away. 

For my other website, converseconserve.com I am reading a very comprehensive behaviour change article by the Australian Public Service Commission which is very enlightening.  Telephone calls = not effective.  Face to face communication = very effective. That's why sustainable landscapers need to be ever-present at community markets and festivals,   produce swaps, public forums, school fetes and kitchen gardens, shopping centre sausage sizzles, and mingling with all aspects of society where possible.