Permablitz #192 – Preston
With a final check of the weather forecast, which didn’t look promising, we locked up the house and jumped on our pushbikes, headed for Saturday’s Permablitz with Nick and Jess. We overestimated how long our bike ride would take, and we arrived 30 minutes early to find Jess marking out a keyhole garden bed design in her front yard. After setting the bikes down and out of the way, we were welcomed with a nice hot cup of tea and a quick tour of the property. As 10:00am rolled by, around 15 of us stood gathered in the front yard, as Jess and Matt lead the team through a rough outline of the jobs for the day, which included setting up two wicking beds, installing some fence posts and planting some fruit trees, as well as building the keyhole raised beds in the front yard.
With many hands, all the jobs were ploughed through effortlessly, it really was an easy day in the garden! What alone would have taken Jess and Nick weeks to do by themselves, took 15 or so of us around 6 hours of light labour, with lots of food and chat breaks sprinkled throughout. As we were all free to help out where we chose, I spent most of the morning setting up the wicking beds, and then moved onto the post install and plantings in the later afternoon. I was thrilled to learn a little bit more about companion planting in the afternoon from another volunteer, whose knowledge of plant types and compatibilities was exceptional.
At the end of the day, with a great feeling of accomplishment, we said our goodbyes and pedaled away. Meeting such an interesting and diverse bunch of people was a wonderful experience, and I’m very much looking forward to doing it all again soon!
Thanks to CB for the words, and Eka Moseshvili and Matt Smith for the pics! To see the full photo gallery, click here!
