Lost in a food forest

Image by Carl Warner

The term ‘food forest’ conjures up images of an abundant edible landscape similar to the chocolate landscape of Willy Wonka in the movie “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”. I think it is a wonderful term that should inspire us to create ecosystems of food in our schoolyards, backyards and community places. It has ended up in my vocab via a local Permaculture Design Course I am undertaking.

Permaculture is an Australian born philosophy of living. In my head it has meant organic gardening with plenty of hippy stuff thrown in. In reality permaculture is based in ecology, traditional knowledge and is dedicated to working with natural elements rather than against them.

It is truly all about sustainable living – and I think many of the teachings could easily be implemented in our school and backyard gardens.

When designing or creating our indoor and outdoor living spaces, Permaculture encourages close observations of natural influences like sun, wind, water, wildlife, soil and vegetation. Permaculture strives for a self contained, high yield system of growing food.

To create a food forest, we need to harness the power of ecosystem interactions that occur in nature. In most of our food gardens – plants are taken out of their ecosystem role and planted in a very different habitat. What if we could harness the power of plant and animal specialisation to help in our food growing? Large scale monocultures and commercial production are the opposite of this way of growing.

Image from “Earth Users Guide to Permaculture” Rosemary Morrow.

Think of the different layers of vegetation that occur in a forest. We have ground covers, shrubs, small to large trees, climbers, fungi and the list goes on. The idea of a food forest is to replicate this with food producing plants. The Australian bush is a food forest for the knowledgeable and certainly provided abundant food for Aboriginal Australia for thousands of years.

The benefits for your soil, your belly and the creatures in your garden are tremendous. Consider stacking plants into vegetation layers, planting to protect from sun and wind, creating a microclimate in your garden and promoting biodiversity.

Slope, water retention, windbreaks, aspect, soils, mulches, plant selection, pest management, nutrient creation and retention and pruning need to be on your list of considerations.

Rosemary Morrow has written an excellent book on Permaculture design – “An Earth Users Guide to Permaculture” and can be purchased online at most book stores.

Get in touch with your local permaculture community:

Permaculture Sydney West

Milkwood

Blue Mountains Permaculture Institute

Under the Choko Tree – sustainable urban living

 

Back to the Future….. and back to the classroom….or not?

Picture courtesy of Amazon News.

In 1985, the year the movie ‘Back to the Future’ was released, I was a skinny red-headed 14 year old who was desperately trying to be as cool as I thought Michael J. Fox was at the time (I had a skateboard, walkman and wanted a Delorean). At the end of the film, the flying time machine zooms off to 2015 and that story becomes ‘Back to the Future 2’. “Roads? Where we are going we don’t need roads…”

Well, here we are – 2015 has arrived (feeling old?) and where is my flying car and hoverboard? A huge and ever increasing amount of change has occurred since 1985 and it led me to thinking about some very important things that have changed – especially for the children of this country.

That skinny 14 year old of 1985 spent most of his play time outside. Living on the edge of the Blue Mountains National Park as a kid I had a huge playground of creeks, caves, trees, tracks and campgrounds to explore. I rode my bike everywhere and enjoyed outdoor activities with family, friends and the local scouts.

Was this your childhood? Do you have fond memories of catching tadpoles and climbing trees? I would love to hear of your favourite outdoor childhood activity – please make a comment below….

Do kids today have the same experiences? Do your kids play outdoors as much as you did? For most of us, the answer is no.

A generational change in the way our children play in the outdoors has happened while most of us were not paying attention. According to Planet Ark Research – in 2011:

“1 in 10 Aussie kids play outside once a week or less.”

“73% of respondents played outdoors more often than indoors when they were young compared to only 13% of their children”

“72% of respondents played outside every day as kids compared to only 35% of their children”

The benefits of outdoor play are enormous including improvements in creativity, critical thinking, concentration and academic performance. Who would of thought huh? Releasing children from the confines of a classroom can actually help their performance in the classroom….!!! Whhaaaaa? Ok – kids lets hit the forest – NOW!

Photo courtesy of Earthcalling

Outdoor time in natural environments has been shown to reduce stress and depression and has the physical benefits of reducing obesity and myopia. You may have heard of the term ‘Nature Deficit Disorder’ – coined by author Richard Louv – from his book ‘Last Child in the Woods’.

Without a strong connection to the natural world – how will this generation grow up to look after it? Now more than ever we need strong, innovative, brave and intelligent environmental leaders.

I gleaned this research and know how from a fantastic teacher resource developed by Field of Mars Environmental Education Centre called “Plugging into Nature”. This professional development course will help you connect your students to nature using technology – and has some excellent ideas and non-classroom tactics for engagement.

Of course many of us do not need research to tell us that we all benefit from quality time in nature. However – as educators we have to deal with all the clutter of syllabuses, exams and the hectic life of modern schools. Where do we find the time to take our class outside?

Our mandate as Environmental Education Centres is to cure this terrible problem of nature deficit disorder! We are up to the task and take as many children as we can each year into nature for quality learning experiences.  Unfortunately we are few (only 25 in NSW) and children are many! Many schools and teachers are leading students into outdoor experiences and connecting them to the amazing natural world and we hope that you all will enter this year with plans to engage outside the classroom.

Is that school vege patch full of weeds and need of a replant? Is there some bushland down the back that needs a nature trail? Could you do some citizen science like Climatewatch and School of Ants?

Have you booked an excursion to your local Environmental Education Centre yet!!!! We would love to see you and your students – let’s change those appalling figures from our supposedly ‘outdoor’ nation and reconnect ourselves and our kids to this incredible planet we live on.

Nature is calling!

 

Bloody battles and new life – the story of the Waratah

Chris Tobin is a local Darug Aboriginal man, artist and educator who we sometimes manage to lure out to Brewongle. We love hearing his stories and feel privileged to learn of his cultural knowledge. Chris recently created some beautiful artwork on one of our grey gums during the Engaging Visions artists workshop. Enjoy this short video as he relates the story of the waratah via his artwork with bellbirds in the background and the majestic Hawkesbury River as a backdrop. Notice the contributions of the grey gum via some macabre leaking sap and look closely for the goanna claw marks on the tree.

NAIDOC Week @ Brewongle

At Brewongle we embrace indigenous values, culture and language and we are celebrating NAIDOC (National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee) week by hosting a week of school groups who will enjoy our rich Aboriginal cultural programs. With the help of our local Aboriginal educators, students will investigate the abundant natural resources used by the local Darug people. Find out how to make dilly bag, spear and canoe from the plants around Brewongle and learn how to catch a duck for dinner with your Darug snorkel!

NAIDOC week officially falls in the school holidays, however we have set aside the last week of term for our events. Visit the NAIDOC week website for more information about this years theme and what you can do to be a part of the celebrations. http://www.naidoc.org.au/

Brewongle is in Darug country and was inhabited by the Buru Berongal people of the Richmond/Windsor area. They used the plentiful resources of the Hawkesbury River (Deerubbin) and surrounds to survive for thousands of years. The Sydney Green Wattle or ‘Wattangulle’ tree yielded many resources for the locals including flour from the seeds, antiseptic and fish poison.

Brewongle offers Aboriginal education days for primary students in stage 1, 2 and 3 all year round.