Two councils in metropolitan Sydney recently celebrated the second National Permaculture Day. Permaculture is a design system for sustainable living that can be applied in densely packed urban areas, like Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs, as much as it can be in rural areas and on farms.
Pittwater and Randwick celebrated the day when permaculture homes and centres across the country open to the public.
Pittwater Council ran a free no dig community workshop, while Randwick’s efforts focused on its Permaculture Interpretive Garden. Pittwater Sustainable Living Education Officer Joanne Tulau said that no dig gardens are a quick and easy way to get home grown vegetables onto your dinner table.
"They are productive and easy to manage, enabling more of us to grow our own food locally, thereby reducing our carbon footprint," she said.
The principle of no dig gardens is based on building up layers of mulch and other material such as old newspapers to create raised garden beds. Originating in Australia, no dig gardening has been described as a design system for growing food that aims to provide for human needs while living in harmony with the land.
Joanne Tulau said the free two hour workshop provided practical information covering all aspects of preparing a no dig garden.
The Permaculture Interpretive Garden is a component of the retrofitted Randwick Community Centre, the buildings and grounds of which have been refurbished for energy and water efficiency, including a grid connected wind turbine and photovoltaic solar panels. The garden is a new type of public open space that combines the functions of a public park and serves at the same time as an educational facility for Council courses.
It is also an activity centre for local community organisations whose focus is sustainability, food initiatives and community development.
