Today we visited a job VEG's Simon finished up last week.  Here's a pic of the design for the backyard, the finished yard, and a closeup of Simon's crazy, crazy paving.

Yesterday Dan and Adam ran day two of VEG's Two-Day Introduction to Urban Permaculture, which is run on the property of Kim and Clive, VEG's first ever design customers (Kim is now a VEG team member and a much better gardener than us!).  We had a lovely day with a great bunch of participants - thanks again to you all for coming along.  At the end of the day Dan did a quick walk around - after having completed a late-summer lightening prune (about 12 large deciduous fruit trees in 2 hrs!), hence the carnage (tough love).  We love this property, not only because Kim and Clive live there, and because Kim feeds us so well (from the garden), but because after five years the garden is beautiful, and about the most pleasant place we know of in Melbourne to spend a Saturday.

Two days ago Dan and Will returned to a large VEG permaculture design and implementation project that was completed about five months ago.  Take a walk about the front yard then the back yard, warts, ducks, giant silver beet, gorgeous connected multidimensional abundance and all!

You can also check out the design and before, during and after photos of the project here and also in our downloadable portfolio.

The front yard

The back yard

We recently compiled some photos of our recent projects into a bit of a portfolio.  It's a big PDF file (37.8 megs!) so be warned, but you are most welcome to download it and check it out - just click on the image below.

Over the last few weeks VEG has been lucky enough to install the new Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden at Auburn South Primary school in Hawthorn South.  Phase one includes twelve large roughsawn cypress VEG beds and four long beds in which fruit trees will grow up over arches.  The original design was done by Paul Bangay, and with a little fine tuning to fit the sloping site and the little arms that will be reaching into the beds, it has come up beautifully!  Some of the next phases will include more veggie beds, a chook system, compost bays and a few other bits and pieces.  Deb is the name of the garden coordinator, and with her at the helm - look out! Deb has been at Weedon Heights Primary for a while, and if her work there is anything to go by, Auburn South will be taking some great strides towards leading the way in sustainability, food production and generally greening up.  We've really enjoyed assisting with the design and implementation of edible gardens in schools lately (Some recent ones being Carrum Primary, Williamstown North Primary, Weedon Heights Primary, and Auburn South Primary), to the point where we think we'll make it a focus.  It is so satisfying putting in a garden that hundreds, indeed thousands of different people will enjoy over the years.  If you are a primary school needing some help with the edible garden design - please get in touch!

Join Will on a tour of a recent VEG installation in Elwood.

Join wonderful Will from VEG on a short tour of recent small garden we installed for the lucky winner of a competition in which VEG partnered with GPT.  Here chooks, fruit and veg all happily co-exist in a tiny backyard without sacrificing any entertaining or play areas.

VEG's landscaping team has been flat out recently and our pipeline is so full we might have to enlarge the pipe!  Here's a few piccies of some systems we completed in the last month.

Eaglemont

This project involved the full-scale permaculture makeover of a front and back yard, including a driveway, all paths, a front-yard food and ornamental forest, a pergola, two sheds, a greenhouse, a chook house, a duck house, a duck pond, a large orchard, seven raised VEG beds, a berry patch, a rainwater tank, some lawn, an ornamental pond, and much more.  We visited today and so many of these photos are hot off the press!

The design:

A 'before' shot of the backyard (showing the spot where the VEG beds and greenhouse below were to be located):

A sequence of shots showing the main VEG beds (topshelf cypress) going in, with VEG greenhouse in the background:

On September 27 2011:

On November 6 2011 - a lot of growth for just over a month!:

The (VEG custom) chook house:

Chook automatic watering system:

Duckpond (fed by tank overflow and in turn feeds orchard):

Fully enclosed fox, possum & bird-proof orchard - with a green manure crop of oats & vetch going nuts (the chooks arrived yesterday and will soon convert it into eggs and manure):

August 10 2011:

September 7 2011:

November 6 2011:

Pond with fountain and food plants including Lebanese cress and water chestnuts (and yes that's right a little bit of lawn - apologies to Bill Mollison!):

Tank:

Raspberry and Blueberry Patch:

Front yard with a nice mix of edibles and ornamentals (yes there is room in permaculture for pretty stuff!):

Broadmeadows

First up is some metal raised beds for an early learning centre in Broad Meadows a few weeks back, with young Will from VEG looking on:

Eltham

Next here's the design and some implementation shots of a partial makeover in Eltham that we finished just yesterday!:

The design:

The chook house:

The strawyard:

The VEG chook tunnel connecting the strawyard to the run:

Where the tunnel meets the run:

Looking from the chook run down toward four roughsawn VEG beds:

The chook run/orchard.  These customers had already planted their fruit trees in what turned out to be the perfect spot!  Note the braced cypress gate - it's really worth getting your gates right as you use them so much and you spend more time patching up a make-shift gate than you do doing it properly from the start:

A roughsawn VEG bed with a dressed and stained bench seat:

Mt Eliza

And let's finish up with a shot of a system we put in some time back in Mt Eliza.  Dan drove past a few weeks back and it was good to see happy chooks, ducks and vegies.  In particular to see that our fox-proofing efforts had paid off (there are many foxes at large in this area):

Over the last few months we've been lucky enough to help design and implement the new Stephanie Alexander School Vegetable Garden at Carrum Primary School.  Here's a few snippets from along the way.  We started with a design consult, and after spending time with school members and interested parents along with the site we went through the permaculture design process.  The design challenge was to connect a food forest, native plants, tough edibles along walkways, ten raised vegie beds, a composting system, a chook-powered vegie plot, and a new shed.  Here's the design the garden group and Dan from VEG came up with together.

Here's some pics from the working bee.  Amazing team of parents and a lot more was achieved (food forest planted and ten VEG beds built and in place and filled with soil!) that day than we get done on a lot of our landscaping jobs!  One of the dads had a dingo which didn't hurt progress.

And here's some photos and a little thank you Vickie the Stephanie Alexander Garden Committee Coordinator sent through a few days back.

"On behalf of our Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden committee at Carrum Primary School I would like to say a huge thank you for your support in getting our new garden off the ground (so to speak!!).

Your supply of garden beds, plants and especially labour has been greatly appreciated and enabled us to complete this part of our task with minimal financial outlay.

I have attached a couple of before and after shots to share with you, what has been achieved over the last four weeks.  We are very lucky to have such fantastic parents on our committee and hard working teachers who gave up large parts of their weekends to ensure we completed most of the tasks we had planned.  We have also now employed our Garden Specialist, an amazing parent, who will ensure the garden program is both an educational one for our students and a viable one for our Kitchen classes.  We are all very excited about the next phase of the development of this program and are very grateful for you willingness to help us on this amazing journey.

Thanks once for all your support, we really appreciate it.

Yours sincerely,

Vickie Wheelahan"

Our pleasure Vickie!!! Can't wait to see the garden evolving and feeding lots of little ones in all different ways!

Here's a few photos of what the VEG implementation team has been up to this week - captions to come along with a few more pics of jobs we missed!