Narre Warren North Community Garden Progress Report

We are doing a permaculture design of the garden, changing the orientation of the beds so that they lie along the contour rather than down the hill. We are doing this so that water and nutrients are not encouraged to flow down the hill during heavy rain but rather are slowed down so that they can stay in the garden to do their work.This will be a slow process as we do not want to dismantle the garden and lose any of what is currently growing. We will need to move some of the perennials to allow for paths and have already started this process.

The current beds are too wide to be able to work on them without standing on the soil so the new beds will be 1.2 m wide so that they can be worked on from either side without standing on the beds.

We are looking for supplies of hay/straw and manure for the compost and sawdust for the paths so if you know of any free supplies please leave a comment.

We had a lovely time on Saturday with about half of our morning in the garden doing the work that needed to be done and half inside planning for the future and chatting over a cuppa. The harvest swap was very successful with most people feeling that they left with more than they came with. We are looking forward to our next session on August 25 from 10 am to 12 noon when we will be having a compost making workshop. It looks as though the Community Garden will be getting its own website and facebook page so stay tuned for more news.

Current orientation of garden beds

New orientation