By Michael Doran
On Sunday 31 March, Healesville Women 4 Women are hosting a Summer Gathering to tour a sustainable garden and meet a pair of very knowledgeable permaculture advocates in Badger Creek.
It is an opportunity to learn how the owners, Dale and Martin, have established and manage their garden and how they use the produce to live off the land. Dale said they want to help and inspire people to take a similar approach to self-reliance through permaculture.
“I’m a firm believer in sharing knowledge, you can’t take it with you and if we are going to save this planet we all have to pull together and tread lightly on the earth,” she said.
“This is not a manicured garden, it’s a productive garden where we try and grow most of our fruit and vegetables here. As soon as we got here eight years ago the veggies went in and pretty much straight away we had as many as we needed.”
They followed with the many fruit trees that she said ‘keep churning out fruit like machines’ and soon added all varieties of berries and the chickens.
“We get a great deal of satisfaction from being self-sufficient and it gives us independence from having to go to the shops to buy things we don’t like that have been sprayed with pesticides.”
The fruits of their labours are everywhere, even extending to fruit wines, but it has come about through a lot of hard work and learning Martin said.
“It’s a beautiful place to work and it is so quiet and peaceful it’s a pleasure to come out into the garden,” he said. “The workload is substantial but you just have to start somewhere, even somewhere small, with veggies and add from there. You just have to start.”
The tour runs from 2-4pm and registration is essential, at https://bit.ly/2GitOp2 or call 5962 5982.
