Urban Projects

Update from Finlaysons After Intern-Blitz

Editor’s Note: Remember the cool little time-lapse video of the PRI’s recent Intern-Blitz of an urban property a few week’s back? Well, below is an update from the lucky and excited recipients of the perma-garden install, written to the designers/installers themselves. I thought I’d share the enthusiasm with all our readers also, to brighten your day. After all, enthusiasm, when on an appropriate trajectory, is the most positive of contagions.

The garden is growing absolutely brilliantly! It has certainly been keeping us busy over the last 3 weeks. I have included a couple of pics so you can see the abundant growth for yourself, although photos can’t really do it justice.

As you can see, some of the zucchini plants have leaves about twice the size of dinner plates and have started getting some little zucchinis on them.

The same for the squash. The little baby squash are really cute.

The watermelons and the rock melons were a little bit dormant for a while but have started to take off in the last couple of days.

The cucumbers in the bed closest to the fence have really got a run on in the last couple of days and have kind of all melded together in a tangle of plants. They have actually grown through the fence and are starting down the other side (into the outside-of-the-fence rhubarb area).

The rhubarb has been growing steadily also. We only lost two of the plants. The two little rhubarb plants that were put into the mulch heaps around the fruit trees have also survived and are doing amazingly well.

The Mediterranean garden was a little bit slow to go for a while also but is now going well. Many of the tomato plants have little tomatoes on them and the basil is kicking along nicely.


Matchbox included for scale

Some of the Chinese cabbages are as big as dinner plates. They literally exploded overnight!

The corn is a bit bigger than knee high. The beans are really intermingled with it and having a lovely time.

The lettuces are also growing steadily in the picking garden just to the right of the bottom of the steps. Some of the tomatoes in that garden are also bearing.

The herbs in the herb spiral are spreading. Already we use lots of the herbs in our cooking every night and also lots of the greens.

We have been loving trying new taste sensations every night by trying different mixes of the herbs and also the salad leaves.

The vines down by the dam are huuuugggge. They went absolutely berserk in the second week and haven’t stopped since! We have been watering them with dam water (by hand with buckets and watering cans — who needs the gym???). There is lots of sea weedy type stuff in the water, we think that is probably the reason for the big growth spurt.

All in all we have been absolutely loving the whole process. The garden is all we talk about at the moment. As I was saying to Nick the other day, I’m sure that visitors go home glassy-eyed saying "we were there for five hours and all they could talk about was the garden!" We have had quite a few visitors specially to see the garden and they are always very impressed (of course they are, how could they not be??).

We have certainly felt a keen presence of your stewardship of the garden over the last weeks. Whenever we do anything to it that changes it, although its not logical, we feel like we should be consulting with you. We talk about all of you all the time and as we move through the garden we remember who put what where and the wisdom that you shared with us whilst you were doing it. The gift that you have given us is immense.

Will send another update soon.

Please come and visit us and the garden if you can.

Yours greenly,

Danae, Mark, Meggie and Bridie

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