Hello

My name is Mark.

I am writing this blog to record my adventures towards taking control of my treadmill lifestyle, and making it more sustainable, ethical and interesting.

So this is an attempt at an escape from bad food and high energy costs,  and a journey towards a better understanding of how to stand on my own two feet.

I am aiming for abundance through an edible landscape in my garden, brewing my own beer and learning to preserve and cook what I have more effectively.

Part of the plan includes building a growing shack from as much recycled material as possible. This will:

• Enable me to create a workshop for building projects.

• Allow me to create microclimates, both for my plants, my beer,  and myself.

• Be a structure that supports water harvest and distribution

• Be an ace place to shoot the breeze and get slowly sozzled in the sun!

Using permaculture principles throughout, I hope to showcase how I can grow food in a really normal garden, without investing too much time and money and creating a yield (making it worthwhile both in terms of money and in terms of effort)

I am aware that there is loads of information on this sort of stuff out there. This is a very normal back yard. I am a very normal person, with little time, even less money and all the normal pressures of life. This means I will probably make loads of mistakes. But that's probably going to be the most interesting parts, so that's ok then!

I look after large gardens in the area. They are generally very beautiful, but I spend an awful lot of time cutting lawns, weeding and molly coddling plants. The garden I am aiming to create does have to be beautiful, but it will not be so high maintenance. I will be designing and maintaining by emulating natural systems, using plant communities that look after each other (guilds), using systems that utilise resources to their fullest, identifying and using microclimates and understanding the landscape I am in.

The garden at the moment is a mess. This is mainly because I have had little time to sort it out. I have, however been thinking, and actual implementation of any garden projects should, I hope, be reasonably swift.

stay tuned