Cinna-Mon: How to Improve the Local Area: Re-vamping the Name...

Cinna-Mon: How to Improve the Local Area: Re-vamping the Name...: On the way to Safeway, sometimes I de-tour to the Nameless Park. It’s a pleasant and relaxing open space, but it wouldn’t kill the local ...

bare spaces: The politically correct space

bare spaces: The politically correct space: "It seems to me that the politically correct idealists and the concerned paranoids are now the landscape designers and open sp..."

Student horticulture blogs

In January I started lecturing in horticulture at the Burnley Campus of the University of Melbourne. Burnley was originally founded as an independent college for horticulture in 1891. It was formally amalgamated with the University of Melbourne in its centenary year, 1991 and is now a campus of the University, part of the Department of Resource Management and Geography in the School of Land and Environment. I'm teaching students in the Associate Degree in Environmental Horticulture, a two-year course that has its origins as one of the original diplomas of the old Burnley College.

One of the subjects I co-ordinate is Information Literacy for Horticulture which covers academic writing, library searching and communications, amongst other topics. As part of this subject students are required to develop a blog and make at least six posts on various themes that relate to plants and people. They're encouraged to post on their experience of their own street or suburb, the quality of landscapes around them and how they might be improved. They're also asked to reflect on what brought them to being interested in plants in the first place and to post on a few technical issues that they have researched. Above all, my aim in this assignment is to get students to practise writing, and in the shared forum of a blog.

I'm looking forward to reading their work and will link to the most interesting posts via this blog.

Open Garden Scheme: Big Thanks!

Thank you to everyone who visited 'Sophia's Food Garden Sanctuary' this weekend!

I loved sharing the garden with everyone. There were lots of questions I couldn't answer, especially when it comes to possums! But I'm inspired now to post more on this blog with the stuff I do know and that includes information on companion planting, which lots of people asked about. I'll be keeping the blog updated more regularly. I was amazed and delighted by all the passion and interest in urban food gardening; it's the way of the future and it was pleasure talking to all of you.

Thanks so much to all the crew who helped guide people through the garden, helped with plant sales, making coffee and welcoming people at the door: Victoria, Alex, Tricia, Daniela, Nadine and Tano, Cassie, Fox, Rachael, Mum and Dad, Tim and Sandy, thank so much! And to Su from the Australian Open Garden Scheme for being so supportive of our desire to open the garden and helping us all the way. And finally thanks to Sophia who lives with and uses the garden every day and is there keeping an eye on it when I retreat back to my flat in Fitzroy. Thanks Sophia for letting me take over your backyard and for sharing its creation with me. I can't thank you enough. And yes Soph, gherkin cucumbers grow best on the ground!