A pop-up green space made of recycled pallets and packed with vertical gardens, shiitake logs, beehives, chickens and plenty of love….
This was our weekend at the Permaculture Piazza at Gardening Australia Live in Sydney.
We set up under an dragon sun and air full of bushfire smoke, coming from fires to the west of Sydney – an event that usually occurs in late Summer (if at all), not in Spring.
It lent an eerie light to everything, and reminded us why we do what we do – encourage people to grow, make and bake their own, to create resilient communities and decrease our collective impact on our planet, and its climate.
The next day dawned bright, and the pallet piazza was ready!
The community corner was a space that folks could sign up to get involved in their local permaculture or transition group, food co-op or a billion other excellent community initiatives…
Each day Costa chose 4 wishes from the wishing tree at the centre of the piazza to win a years supply of seeds…
It was an incredible three days of workshops, gardening tips, sporulating shiitake logs, meeting new people, animated discussions about everything from aquaponics to strawbale building, and the odd chasing of an escapee chicken.
We’d like to extent a humungous THANK YOU to everyone who gave their time, effort and skills to make this project happen…
To Toro for the opportunity to do the whole darn thing, to Sam and Simone of Viva Living Homes for the workshops and strawbale action, Traditional Timber Frames for the beautiful handcrafted timberwork, Cana Communities for building the piazza, Steve Batley for the workshops and Vgardens…
Daniel from New Leaf Nursery for the chickens, the workshops and all things green and growing, Justine from City food gardens and Gordon from Permablitz Sydney for the community corner support, Kate from Real Food and Madeline from Secret Flower Business…
Water Garden Paradise for the plants that made our Aquaponics pond even funkier, Grant from Urban Growers for the workshop, Jimmy from Meanwhile Outside and Andy from Farmrun for the printed beauty, Zag and Emma from Green Up Top for being such great doers…
Green Harvest Seeds for the year’s supplies of seeds for lucky wisherers, Gil from Florilegium Botannical Bookstore for the permaculture library, Tim Malfroy for showing up for his workshop despite being in the midst of heartbreaking apiary burnout (literally) and Costa for granting wishes and making smiles bloom wherever he went…
And double hooray to our kick-ass crew of Milkwooders: Gigi, Floyd, Michael, Danni, Trev, Stephen, Heather and Filipe. And to Nick, for dreaming the whole thing up, and making it happen.
>> More posts about urban permaculture here…
Wow! That’s so cool!
What a beautful set-up! Very nicely done 🙂
I love the vibe of it. Creative, organic and community minded. Thanks for sharing the pictures.
The wish you took a snap of was very gorgeous. At first glance you could think there is a little self interest going on (can I get a puppy, lol) but the larger picture that I really appreciate – is they see plants with animals and it’s their wish to see that happen to save the planet. Plants with animals is how nature evolved. 🙂
Can we see the wishes that won?
Not really sorry, I didn’t have the presence of mind to photograph each after the event! What was strange though was that out of 3 wishes I took photos of while on the tree, two won… out of a tree full 🙂
Superb job!
The space looks wonderful, and as always, you’ve done a great job of reaching out and connecting with others (and the wider community).
I wish we’d been there! (We chose to attend “Grand Designs Live” instead, which was only OK.)
I couldn’t make the weekend but am so glad I got to see the photos and a sneak peek on all I missed out on. It looked awesome, (and you guys must be exhausted!) I’ll bet a huge amount of people have come away from the piazza totally and utterly inspired.
Oh if only I’d been in Sydney that week, I would have popped in everyday with my grandkids. It looks splendid. Congratulations to all the hard workers at Milkwood Farm.
Beautifully done! The workshops were great as well! Congrats!
Looks like a great event! And, hats off to you for an exceptional use of pallets! Hope you are all doing ok and not too badly affected by the fires 🙁
OMG that’s amazing! Did you do all this in a single weekend?
Very inspiring, I love it.
Well done- looks great! Doesn’t sound good for Tim- how many has he lost?
not sure yet… fires still burning 🙁
Beautiful, inspiring and moving, even from this distance. What a frenzied effort behind the scenes to create this wonderful haven for such a short time! The ripple effects will be well worth it. My favourite pic: the chook in the straw and her chicks in the tree pot. Thank you 🙂
Oh wow, that looks so amazing!!! Beautiful setup and ideas! Thanks for sharing. Nicole, Northern BC, Canada
Love the idea of re-purposing Pallets, have done a bit myself, but how do you keep the white-ants (Termites) out? We have a resident echidna in our garden & she loves to dig up my lawn in search of those munchies, but even she can’t get them all & I inevitably lose some of my pallet constructions to those destructive white-ants. I’m hesitant to use poison as I love my “pet” echidna 🙂
What an amazing event! WOW… I wish that we had more things like this in Perth. As I see it, only good can come from things like this! The colours, the happiness, the learning, the growing….just wonderful!
Very impressive work guys!
We are just embarking on a rooftop communtiy garden permaculture project in central Fremantle, and this is a great example for an urban space! Will probably steal an idea or two! 😉
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Love this!