Tag Archives: guerilla gardening

October 12, 2016 · 1:44 pm

Planting the weaving rushes

This is one of my newer planting sites. I’ve weeded it over a couple of times, collected rubbish and planted some things here to see what could make it.  Then this grille appeared and there was a flood.  So there were just a couple of plants left.

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I started out by weeding and collecting more broken glass. I’d just been to a workshop on weeds and their uses, and so I took it to be interesting that this place has pink flowering fumitory rather than the more common (but not so medicinal, evidently) white flowering fumitory.  Noted.  I continue to find it funny that when I was still in school in the early eighties I would read Mrs Grieve’s (English) Herbal and wish all these amazing plants might be growing anywhere I would ever meet the.  Well, dear reader, many of them do, but it took me a long time to realise that they were weeds!

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In the clean up I found more intriguing rusty stuff (on the left–I realise my trowel has seen a lot of use!)

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So out came weeds and in went plants.

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Even more saltbush and sea fig on the upper parts pf the site…

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And into the banks where so much water had so recently passed, I put some of the Ngarrindjeri weaving rushes that have grown up quietly since the weaving workshop. If there is a year they might make it, this year of flooding rains might be the one.

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A portrait of the gardener…

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And time to head home.

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September 27, 2016 · 3:50 pm

More guerilla planting

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One weekend, out I went with pigface, also known as Carpobrotus glaucescens or sea fig.  It has an edible fruit which is quite delicious.  These started life as cuttings in autumn but now a couple have started to flower.  The world is wet around here, time to get them into the ground.

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I walked up to a tram stop where I have planted a lot.  I spoke to the poisoners last time I was there and weeded to try and help them not to poison saltbush of various kinds, boobialla and wattle… One of them told me that ruby saltbush don’t absorb the poison.  How I wish that were true, but it doesn’t appear that way to me  I have had many turn black after the poisoners pass through.  When I went back recently to catch a tram I could see lots of weeds and few plants.  Some of the larger ones, rhagodias in particular, had made it and were doing well.  This time I arrived to find the whole bed deep in mulch.  The mulch was only a few days in place, and all over the plants.  Three cheers for mulch, three boos for burying the living.  I spent time excavating sedges, boobialla, correas, pigface (the large one thriving here drove my decision to plant the bed out with these highly recognisable and quickly spreading plants)… and everything else I could find.  I managed to find a few leaves sticking out and dig some plants out that way.  Others I found by accident, parting the mulch to plant other things!

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In went the sea figs. Then home again, collecting a  lot of rubbish after the Royal Show and the storms of recent weeks.

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I scored some promising rusty stuff, and had a chat with a chap smoking a cigarette by the road who clearly knew what guerilla gardening was, asked me if that was what I was doing, and was generally approving and cheerful toward my project.  I put a few more plants in along the route home, and then it was time for clean up.

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September 21, 2016 · 3:18 pm

The springtime, it brings on the planting

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It’s spring! Well, maybe not where you live.  But it is where I live!  the first poppy came out!

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Bark is peeling…

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My part of the country is better known for droughts than flooding rains, but we had a close call and neighbours on our street were flooded.  This is just round the corner…

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And this is one of my planting sites, with salt bush to the right and water pouring down the bike path to the left!

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So I planted out sheoak seed of two kinds.

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And the last few months’ collection of E Scoparia seed.  I’ve been tucking all the gumnuts I find into this bowl and there is a satisfying drift of tiny seeds at the bottom.

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And there were, needless to say, also saltbush seeds involved.  And now, we wait!

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September 7, 2016 · 3:59 pm

Quandong planting…

I mentioned to my parents that I was trying to grow a quandong (Santalum Acuminatum).  This is a native tree that carries edible fruits. It was, and is, known to Indigenous peoples who ate it, and is one of the better known bushfoods.  Some non-Indigenous people call it native peach but to me it is more like rhubarb, and yet unlike rhubarb, being its own thing. It is sour and tangy but the texture is quite firm, and softens with cooking.  It was one of the special treats of my childhood.  Free food was always exciting in my family but some free food was more exciting. Quandongs were especially good, partly because they often led to quandong pie and pie was a rarity.  Plus, the fun of cracking the pits to eat the nuts. When we lived in the goldfields in Western Australia we would forage for these fruits, finding the trees because emus left telltale signs they had been eating them. We had a tree in our yard in one mining town we lived in. My grandmother had a tree in her back yard.  But these trees turn out to require a symbiotic relationship with another plant/s and they are quite hard to grow in your backyard (depending on where it is). They resist domestication.

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My comment to my father resulted in a surprise gift of saved quandong pits.  My uncle has a grove of trees at his place further north in our state and preserving them is a huge seasonal task, because the fruits are small (perhaps the size of a hazelnut in its shell–smaller than a walnut in its husk) and the edible part is at best the thickness of orange peel and more often the thickness of mandarin peel around the pit, and about the same texture when raw. My uncle had seeds dating back to 2011, saved with the location of the original tree marked on them (most were from the farm where my aunt grew up).  I have no idea if they are viable.  But there were kilograms of them! And then there were about 5 fruits saved in an envelope that Dad had saved from a tree he found at a lookout, that he thought would be extra suitable for a dry site.

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Well, I took my uncle’s advice–he thinks these are easy to grow but my experience is different–scuffed up the mulch in the front yard where it has taken only 3 years to get our quandong tree to knee height (but the fact it is alive and growing is a triumph), and put them in.  I planted lots in the front yard, and then headed out into the neighbourhood planting them in mulched areas all over the place where I presume the chances are slim but success would be awesome! I hope the winter rain and now the spring weather persuades these little pits to seek out the light and a companion plant and all the other necessities of life.

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August 26, 2016 · 3:40 pm

Tending the sedges

The sun is out some days now, and I am well after quite a lot of winter snuffling, so I have been out in the neighbourhood.

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I set out with 16 ruby saltbush seedlings.  Some went in at the end of a street.  First my friend stopped on his way to work and we had a chat about the risks to this patch when the Royal Show opens and pressure for car parking creates all manner of hazards for plants large and small. Their prospects have been much improved since we first put out plant protective bunting. Then I was hailed by a man who lives right at that end of the street.  He has concerns about bad treatment of the plants and also about crime and drug taking, and shared them with me. Clearly his interventions have led to some of the recent changes in our area to close off access points to public land where it is clear some people are using after dark.  He has been putting stakes beside some of my plantings and they are mostly thriving. So I tried to accentuate the positive and emphasise the long term nature of the project and how much better this part of the neighbourhood looks now than it did in the years before he moved in.

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Then I moved around to a nearby reserve and planted the remainder of my seedlings in gaps left as other plants have died. I found a huge grub, something I see seldom these days.  I remember as a child how exciting it was when Dad would dig one up, and he would put it on his spade and set it a little way off so that birds could come and eat it.  I am glad some beetle will get to live here. I carefully put it back under some mulch out of the sight of passing birds. It looked succulent, even to my unwilling eyes.

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But my main task was to tend to the sedges growing in this area.

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There are lots of them growing beside a pedestrian and cycle path, but some of them have been faring badly in recent years after having been extremely healthy earlier in life.

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Now that I have learned about these plants from the Ngarrindjeri Aunties, I understand that the way the council has treated these plants (a rough haircut 10 cm above ground every year) is probably killing them.

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In some sad cases, only the root mass and a lot of dead sedge is left, but in others there is still a little foliage coming on. So I cleared away the dead to make way for the living.

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Having had their lesson in how the plants spread I could see that some of the plants that are there now are new plants that have been sent out by some of those that are dead or perhaps dormant.  In other cases, I hope that using the Aunties’ wisdom might let the old plant recover.  Meantime my little sprouts are coming along and perhaps this is a place they can be planted eventually.  Then, some rubbish collection and home again.

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July 21, 2016 · 4:56 pm

Train station plantings

I finally decided to plant out the Eucalyptus Scoparia I manged to grow from seed.  I have been planting out an area near the railway line for some time now and it has gone from bare and weedy to bushy and well covered. There is plenty of protection for a tiny tree now!

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I planted some more ground covers and was surprised to find that the seafoam statice that had been doing so well there had vanished, with some holes left behind.  I hope it has been dug out and replanted somewhere where it was wanted.

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The E Scoparia went in behind a bench where I’m hoping it will be safe to grow.

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Later in the day I headed over to a new place I have been thinking over.  It is a barren space adjoining the railway station in my neighbourhood, with an open drainage route running through it.  I have been wondering whether the rushes might grow in the drainage channel, which is quite mossy in places at this time of year. I thought I’d start with the sides of the space though.

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I took over some native pigface (Carprobutus glaucescens) which has grown readily from cuttings, some saltbush, a hop bush and a eucalypt (unknown species).

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In they went.  There was some soil here and a lot of sandy unpromising material as well.

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And, there was so much broken glass.  It looks to me as though someone/s must have had fun smashing bottles against the bridge walls here at some point.  So I collected all I could.

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I took my haul of rubbish home and tucked the rusty wire into my iron water jar for later use in dyeing.

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July 15, 2016 · 3:21 pm

Winter planting

Once I got started on the rushes, I wanted to keep planting and there have been some breaks in the rain.  Today I noticed a leak from one of our rainwater tanks.  It was near the top, from the overflow pipe, suggesting there is water up above the overflow outlet in that tank which is struggling to escape.  That has never happened before, and is evidence of HOW MUCH RAIN we have had.  You know what I’m saying: planting time is upon us.

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Here is my bike trailer load of plants bound for a bed alongside the tram stop on the nearby main road.  When I got there, there was another woman already at work cleaning up, who said she picks rubbish up there twice a week (she also cleared the paving and all manner of improvements).  She was impressed that I was doing my own planting and propagating and suggested I might want to join the adopt a station programme, which apparently provides plants.  Clearly she works up and down the pubic transport corridor, because she knew the best planted stations, where work for the dole are active and where the lavender is growing so well anyone could pick it. It was fun speaking with another close observer of these often unloved spaces.  She had noticed the reduction in rubbish and weeds from my efforts!

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This time I had rhagodias from my generous friend (this is a sandy site where I hope they will do well), creeping boobialla that has come on strong since the cuttings went in months back; some little wattles and yet more ruby saltbush.

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I put them up into the bed and climbed up after them.

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In they went!

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There are previous plantings that look dead in these beds, but perhaps they will come back… and in among them, there were some struggling knobby club rushes and…

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Can you tell?  In the foreground, a small patch of the Ngarrindjeri weaving rushes!

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In the meantime, I finished all my grey handspun in an airport a few days back and I am now creating more so I can finish! More soon… it would be so good if this jumper could be complete before the cold weather passes!

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July 13, 2016 · 6:32 pm

Green grow the rushes…

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Remember my tiny sedge plants? They have more than doubled in size now.  So at last, out they go into the wintry weather.

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My first attempt to propagate correas from cuttings seems to have mostly succeeded (that is a correa with the almost round leaves).

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Here are some more in with saltbush, hop bush and boobialla plants.

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I have even had some success with dianellas this time!  I think it must be time to get some of these plants out into the ground…

 

 

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June 1, 2016 · 11:43 am

Last of the autumn guerilla plantings

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I got home from a work a little early thanks to a lift from a friend, and decided to get out into the neighbourhood while it was still light.

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Saltbush going in beside the tram bridge and bike path.

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Wattles and more saltbush going in on the other side of the tram bridge in a particularly desolate patch as the light fades.

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I came home with one bucket full of empty pots, gloves and rubbish, and the other full of fallen leaves.

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Just enough time to plant beetroot in the back garden and admire the lemon scented gum over the back fence.

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May 28, 2016 · 6:34 pm

#MenditMay Guerilla gardening

Continuing the mending theme, I’ve been out doing a little earth repair in the way of guerilla gardening. This time I planted rhagodia (seaberry saltbush), and an olearia gifted by a friend.  These plants are native to the area she lives in, and as well as having them in her garden and the nearby scrub, she has them coming up in inconvenient places in her garden.  When that happens she pots them up for me!  Bless her heart.

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Here they are ready to go out into the wider world… in which masses of fungi had sprung up very recently. They are so pretty and delicate and so numerous!

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As I planted the shrubs, a cyclist pulled over and hailed me by name.  She turned out to be a friend of the woman who gave me these plants.  I had to love that sweet coincidence!  These plants have gone in beside the train tracks where a couple of dead trees have recently been removed and the gaps are creating openings for weeds and for travellers who don’t care for tender little plants the way I do.

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Hopefully, being planted in cool damp weather, they will grow up in time for summer heat.

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Later the same week I went out with more plants and added them into areas where plants died in summer or gaps look like they might need filling. Out they went to be planted beside fences…

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These three were pulled out by the roots next day!  Perhaps someone thought they were weeds?  Happily their neighbours were all left intact.

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Some of those planted a year ago are really large now!  It’s exciting to see these plants thriving round the neighbourhood, while I’m propagating more for the future.

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