At 9.30 am on a lovely sunny Sunday, 18 Altona Community Gardens members (and some non members) gathered at Kate's house in Altona. The task was to begin the transformation of her nature strip into a beautiful and productive vegetable garden and hopefully have some fun too! Chatting and fuelling up on some warm coffee and tea, the attendees milled around and we were very happy to see some past attendees as well as some new faces. Dominique did a fantastic job of welcoming

Altona Community Gardens is proud to work with the Louis Joel Arts and Community Centre on the Nourish Project. This 'work for the dole' project started in November 2015 and since then the whole backyard has been transformed into an edible oasis. There are 9 timber raised garden beds: these are 'wicking beds' which saves a lot of water as there is a water reservoir under the soil where the plants grow. The water wicks up into the soil so that optimum soil moisture is maintai

On the 31st January we held an Altona open garden tour, which was fantastic. Five of our members - Dy and Kerrie, Adeline, Peter, Shotaro and Mara welcomed visitors to their home for a talk and tour. The principles of permaculture were explained and we saw how and why it works for productive gardening that requires less maintenance. We discussed feeding and mulching as well as new techniques such as straw bale gardening which is great for people with poor soil. Basically str