On April 7th a group of 35 community members came to Rolf's house to transform his overgrown yards into a thriving permaculture garden throughout the course of one day. We had fun getting our hands dirty, while also enjoying good food, community, and two educational workshops (beekeeping and sauerkraut making!).

And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleaning of thy harvest: thou shalt leave them for the poor, and for the stranger. – God.

Our suburbs are a gleaners paradise, the overhanging branches and diverse pickings are tribute to our bountiful subtropical climate and multicultural heritage.But the decades of nativist plantings, and the overly-cautious policies that keep food producing trees off of our nature strips lest somebody slip on a macadamia, or be offended by fallen fruit, has dampened the cities potential as a veritable food forest.

The edible streets tour offers an introduction to foods, fungi, weeds and other functional plants that inhabit our urban environment. Along the way we discuss the ethical considerations of harvesting, share maps, surplus and ideas to contribute to our edible landscapes.

The lovely Kat from Forgreenies has just posted a short video from the most recent edible streets walking tour. Be sure to check out the other great videos on her website, including this instruction piece on how to make a fruit harvester.

Most of the fruit we can buy in the city has traveled long distances, sometimes it even comes from overseas. This wastes huge amounts of energy, and alienates us from our food and farmers. If you own property why not consider planting fruit trees and other edible and functional landscapes along the perimeter. It is a great way to provide for your community and share with your neighbours.You can also petition your council to plant and support foodscapes and community gardens, or just start doing it yourselves.

“It was a joyous day filled with collaborative sharing, and I gained knowledge of the local abundance that our streets really offer,” enthused Teia, one of the lucky participants on the day. If you think you’d like to join in the next tour register your interest by joining the blitzbrisbane newsletter and keep an eye on our calendar of upcoming events.

Whitney was the coordinator of Permablitz #20 at the Jane Street Community Gardens in West End. She just put up a post on her blog describing the day, so head on there to read the full entry and check out lots of great photos from the day in the gallery.

So as some of you may know I have taken over coordinating my local community garden. I have a lot of fantastic help but it is still a major amount of work. A little background for those of you that I haven’t already told: Jane Street Community Gardens were destroyed in the 2011 floods. Everything was washed away. This was before I was here obviously but the damage is still evident at the garden. The volunteers at the garden at that time were ready to just walk away– it was too much to rebuild.

That’s when Permablitz stepped in. Permablitz is this amazing group of volunteers from all over Brisbane involved in the permaculture movement. They come together to “blitz” peoples’ yards. They take away drab, water-hungry lawns and replace them with veggie gardens, chickens, water gardens, and most importantly food security and sustainability. They are able to do in one day, with an amazing mob of volunteers, what it would take one person years to accomplish. Permablitz heard about what happened to Jane Street Gardens and stepped in. They helped rebuild raised beds and rescue plants and clear rubbish and mud and the garden was able to slowly reestablish itself. 18 months goes by. We’re slowly still rebuilding the garden but it’s a lot of work for just a few people and most of us don’t know how to use power tools (for rebuilding raised beds, etc) and one day of work for three or four of us hardly makes a dent. Enter Permablitz again. They agreed to come back and help us finish up rebuilding the garden! And guess who got to coordinate it  Yours truly!

Some of the photos of our amazing day are below. We had almost 70 people descend on our little garden. I was so humbled and excited to have so many wonderful people take an entire day of their weekend to help us. We now have 7 more plots to rent out, our orchard is rebuilt and much much more. If you want to see more pics please visit our Facebook page at Jane Street Community Garden. We’re also working on getting a website going.

On a delightful day in early December, sunny and warm, but not too much of either, my Oxley blitz kicked off. The first two people to arrive were early, and dead keen to get started, but I made them a cup of tea and told them there would be plenty of gardening to go around. Around 9am more people arrived and we started to get stuck into what I had planned. The idea was mostly to convert a large chunk of the north facing lawn into productive food space. There were plans for an annual veggie bed, a sprawling pumpkin and zucchini patch, and a small orchard.

Soon the blitz was in full swing, and already taking off in unexpected and wonderful directions. I had never dreamed that people would be happy to weed nutgrass out of the lawn before planting the orchard and I had expected to do my best to ignore the nutgrass until my planned barrier of sweet potato took over. However people insisted that I let them weed out the nutgrass and soon eager blitzers were ripping happily through the dreaded nutgrass.

I had also planned a little path running alongside my annual veggie patch, but a couple of big, burly blitzers had another surprise for me and decided that we needed a properly engineered and laid path. They grabbed star pickets, mallets and bricks and swung into action.

By the end of the day, we had a beautiful no dig garden on what used to be an uncontrollable nut grass mound, a sparkling new path with a brick border, a wonderful herb spiral full of replanted herbs, a thai herb walk, a promising orchard, three trellises made from homegrown bamboo and a barbecue area planted with citronella grass for bug free picnics. The next morning I woke up to find a kookaburra perched on one of the trellises, so I'm not the only one to be very pleased with the outcome of the day! Thanks to everyone who is involved, especially the facilitators and thanks also to everyone who helped me with my design.

And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleaning of thy harvest: thou shalt leave them for the poor, and for the stranger. – God.

Our suburbs are a gleaners paradise, the overhanging branches and diverse pickings are tribute to our bountiful subtropical climate and multicultural heritage.But the decades of nativist plantings, and the overly-cautious policies that keep food producing trees off of our nature strips lest somebody slip on a macadamia, or be offended by fallen fruit, has dampened the cities potential as a veritable food forest.

Join us for a tour of the edible streets of West End on Sunday the 6th of May to celebrate International Permculture Day, Jane's Walk and the URBNE Festival. The edible streets tour offers an introduction to foods, fungi, weeds and other functional plants that inhabit our urban environment. Along the way we discuss the ethical considerations of harvesting, share maps, surplus and ideas to contribute to our edible landscapes. The walk starts from the cnr. of Boundary and Vulture Streets, West End at 10am.

The lovely Kat from Forgreenies produced a short video from one of the previous edible streets tours. Be sure to check out the other great videos on her website, including this instruction piece on how to make a fruit harvester.

Most of the fruit we can buy in the city has traveled long distances, sometimes it even comes from overseas. This wastes huge amounts of energy, and alienates us from our food and farmers. If you own property why not consider planting fruit trees and other edible and functional landscapes along the perimeter. It is a great way to provide for your community and share with your neighbours.You can also petition your council to plant and support foodscapes and community gardens, or just start doing it yourselves.