History

This is a work in progress and an Australian Government funded initiative under T-QUAL grants...Here’s some of what, how and when it all happened...

 January 2012

• Planted a little grove of tagasaste with return Helpxer Emily...a year from now the bees will enjoy the early spring blooms!

December 2011

• Thanks to all the work from Luke & Alysha, wwoofers & Rod the Beeman on his bobcat, the Australian native garden miraculously got planted, tree guarded and started growing! WOW!
• Oskar and Toni, wwoofers from Finland and Lena & Oliver from Germany arrived just in time to help us move truckloads (literally!) of mushroom compost & mulch- thanks guys!
• Ripping of the Bushtucker section of the garden began
• Helped by wonderful (and that's an understatement) wwoofers Mira Grillovich (Austria), Winja Baumfried (Austria) and Mirjam Crillovich-Cocoglia (France) we got down to the business of marking out the cottage garden plan, rotary hoeing and preparing for mulch arrival...and yay - the girls held a cermony to plant the first plant into the cottage garden...a purple sugarcane! 
• Ordered plants for the Cottage Garden section including everything from liquorice to lemon balm, soapwort to sugarcane
• Began planning the conversion of a recycled shipping container into a farmgate shop & honey tasting bar

• November 2011

• Began planting & mulching some key trees including: carobs, pine nuts, pecans, lychees, persimmons, cork oaks, ginkgo, jaboticabas, loquats and tung oil...so many more to go!
• Planted tagasaste (false lucerne) as nurse maid trees for the main trees. The tagasaste will get their roots down and help keep the soil friable, as well as provide us with mulch and great flowers for the bees to enjoy
• Luke Kramer & Alicia created the plan for the bushtucker/natives section
• Tanya Sawyer spent hours creating a wonderful design for the cottage garden section

September & October 2011

Tue 13th - the big irrigation tank arrived, with a bit of rolling and heaving and shoving eventually got it into the right place!

Thu 8/Fri 9th - Tim Heard, entomologist and one of Australia's foremost native bee experts, joined us on the farm to help us with planning for the native bee sanctuary. Ohmygawsh this guy is full of interesting facts, funny tidbits and amazing insights into stingless bees. Wow - what a pleasure to listen and learn from a long time native bee lover. And the honey...you've never tasted anything like sugarbag honey! Hopefully though when we have our honey tasting bar and farmgate shop up and running you'll be able to taste some of Tim's sugarbag...it's top shelf stuff!

Tue 6th - Bucko arrived with another load of sawdust and got bogged! Onya Bucko! But he's a good teacher so he got the only person on the farm who can't drive a tractor or a manual (that would be me, Anna), and taught me how to do both. Soon the truck was free and a lot of laughs had we.

Mon 5th: Bucko arrived with the first load of sawdust mix which will make up most of the organic matter to fill the water retention pits. Started day dreaming about all the different types of plants we can choose from for the cottage garden section...mmmmm....

Sun 4th: Added a 3rd of a bag of dolomite to all the mounds (above the pits), dug it in and then sprinkled some summer active clover on top as a green manure. Had the help of the kids and the grandad so got a fair bit done...including moving piles and piles of firewood. The kids discovered the deep holes that have been dug to support the trellis for the kiwi fruit planting and had lots of fun disappearing in them.

Fri 2nd: Pop helped out moving piles of kindling off the hillside, and Luke (landscaper) and Alicia (botanist) visited to talk about the vision for the bushtucker area...finger limes, macadamias, midyim berries and plenty more! Solar oven roasted wattle seed anyone?

Thu 1st - Orange-loving Peter from Get Real Landscaping summonsed his sensors to mark out contours, while supervising Neville Earthworks who removed stumps and began digging all the pits for the trees (this is where you scoop some earth out and pile it up, giving a nice spot for water to collect and hold while the roots of the tree get a nice raised mound in which to grow. The lovely Ian Mobbs from Krambach Chainsaws & Pumps came by to give much needed advice and wisdom on the irrigation set up.

 August 2011

Tue 30th & Wed 31st: Mike Whitney and the crew from Channel 7's Sydney Weekender joined us on the farm for some fun and filming...so not much work on the hillside project today!

Thu 25th - Peter from Get Real Landscaping spent the day on the hill with us dipping hundreds of stakes in coloured pots of paint so we could mark out where we'd be putting paths, beds and trees. Green means path edges, white means trees, orange stripes means contours, blue means...uh oh, maybe green means garden beds, white means contours and blue means...? Hopefully we'll get it right tomorrow! The poor hillside is looking like a big pin cushion.

Fri 26th: Simon from Cutting Edge Tree Services - or as we like to call him "Michaelangelo" - completed dead tree felling. But no ordinary tree man, he carved and sculpted a tree stump into a throne, another into a chair and a log into a lounge! We also picked out blocks of wood to use as stepping stones through one of the gardens. A few huge piles of mulch were also created, meaning the trees will return to the soil from which they'd sprung. 

July 2011

Tue 26th - Yay! Found out we were successful with the TQUAL Grant which will help us with irrigation, plant purchase and development of a small honey tasting bar in a recycled shipping container!

April 2011

Sent in our application for the TQUAL Grant

March 2011

Can't get the idea out of our heads that we want to plant an amazing garden full of species of importance to humanity, and that will provide a great habitat for Australian native bees. We want the garden to help improve food and species resilience in the area, as well as to educate and inspire others to think about productive plantings in their backyards and communities....ummm....but we know we can't do it alone! 

Out of the blue, we get an email from an old friend of ours - Ken Hawkins. We'd worked with him years ago on Heron Island where he was the garden wizard (and you need to be a wizard on an island made of coral sand with no topsoil!). He'd gone on to design ethnobotanical gardens around the world (Laucala Resort in Fiji, as well as gardens in the Maldives, the United Arab Emirates, Far North QLD etc), so we asked him: "Would you come down to good ol' Nabiac, NSW?" . He replied: "My pa says I'll get a nose bleed if I go that far south", but he came anyway!

And we're so glad he did! Over a couple of days he graciously and generously listened to our vision and translated it to paper, giving us a design that helped us see our bare hillside paddock in a totally different way. Then he jetsetted away for his next international gig leaving our kids wondering where all the fun pencils and stencils had gone. Ken Hawkins - thank you!