The Flowerpot Pen

Community Projects

This blog is another article from Grow! Spring Edition, 2024. Grow! Is a new zine for garden and art inspo in the South West of Victoria, Australia.

Community Projects:

Gardens can be more than the space surrounding your home. They can also be spaces for public use including parks, botanic gardens, community gardens, gardens in town spaces, and some curated natural spaces.

Terang community gardens and wetlands, foley st, Terang, vic, Australia — A community space

Many of the public garden spaces I have mentioned are imagined, created, and maintained by members of the community, often on a volunteer basis. Places such as community gardens are valuable resources for inner city spaces where people can build community whilst looking after their own wellness at the same time. They are also becoming more popular in regional and rural areas too.

Two community gardens I know of in my local area are Warrnambool Community Garden and Camperdown Community Garden. I’m hoping to get one up and running in Terang, but that’s a work in progress. (If you’re interested in getting on board with that, send me an email)

Eucalyptus flower at Terang college wetlands — Flower at Terang College Wetlands.

Even if you have your own patch of land to work on, getting involved in a community garden project can be a great way to contribute by sharing knowledge and doing something to ensure food security.

A community project I’ve been involved with for a number of years is the Terang Community Park and Wetlands (TCP&W) on Foley St, Terang. It is across the road from the wetlands at Terang College, another great project I’ll explore in a later edition.

TCP&W was started as a direct result of a council call for information on what individual communities want and/or need.

The project is situated in a corner of the Terang Dry Lake, a volcanic formation that has had an interesting and varied history. It is pumped dry now, with various sporting developments on parts along with farming. The area was chosen as a place to increase parklands including a wetlands area.

This is an ongoing project, but with the input of community members it will become a place for future times people to come and marvel at the beauty of plants, nature, and wildlife.

Have a hunt around your community for ‘garden’ projects you can contribute to. You won’t regret it!

Til next time!

Grow!

Well it’s been quite a while since I’ve posted anything on this platform, but now I’m back!

Over the past year I’ve been producing a quarterly zine focused on gardens and art in Southwest Victoria in place of posting here but this time the printing gods are conspiring against me. I can’t for the life of me get this edition to print in the usual format!

Not to worry, over the next couple of weeks I will be putting the zine on here while I get the printing issues sorted. Each section will constitute a blog post.

Front cover of Grow! Spring, 2024. Edition 3 — Front cover, Grow!

First cab off the rank an interview with a fabulous artist who is on the verge of opening a shop to sell her cute, colourful artwork. Meet Jess Fowler:

Jess is well known in the district as she has been involved with beautifying the streetscape of local towns with murals and even some extremely cute Christmas decorations.

Jess has loved creating art from a young age and she feels blessed to have reached a point where people enjoy her work enough to have it in their homes and their daily lives. she enjoys working with acrylic paints on canvas, but she has lately extended her accomplishments to be involved with designing book covers and illustrations, along with the aforementioned murals and other street art.

When asked what her inspiration is she replied simply “colour”. She expanded on this by saying “I tend to be lead not by the subject…but what I am drawn to, colour wise, at that moment”. Her bright, quirky subjects and colourful, often floral, backgrounds are created simply, with an aim to “make people smile”. “Life is full of things that are worrying, stressful…if I have an opportunity to create something that makes folks happier, then that is exactly what I will do”.

What higher ideal is necessary for an artist, but to bring joy to the world, and that is exactly what Jess does.

Jess is on the cusp of establishing herself as the next person to bring creativity to the famous Johnstone Court, Terang, ‘art precinct’ when she opens ‘Jess Fowler Art’ in September.

The opening of this new part of her art adventure is on Saturday 21 September from 9.30am to 2.30pm.

After this date she will have her shop open Thursday, Friday, Saturday from 9.30am to 2.30pm.

Johnstone Court, High St, Terang, VIC 3264

Please make the time to stop in to meet Jess, and hopefully find your own piece of joy.

Til next time!

Once Upon a Chair

This is the second post from my new zine ‘Grow!’. Meet ‘Once Upon a Chair‘ and the creative brains behind it, Liz.

Once Upon a Chair

*Taken from Grow! Winter 2024, 2nd edition.

Liz has been a creative person from a young age, she has used a variety of mediums, painting with acrylics, oils, sign writing, then teaching herself fabric based arts and upholstery. Her sense of curiosity often lead the way.

The items of furniture she works with come from a variety of sources: op shops, ‘finds’, marketplaces, as with the fabrics she uses to cover them with.

These fabrics can also be sourced from shops and websites of other artists. As much of the original fabric as possible is kept to be used again on other projects.

Collaborating with other artists and supporting their work is a high priority.

When designing the finished product Liz takes inspiration from the shapes and style of the piece, “a round, cylinder shaped stool became a strawberry sponge cake, a circular mid century chair became a Koi pond!” she said.

Looking to the future, Liz went on to say “with a high sense of curiosity, there will be many new and different experiences.”

Liz has work displayed and for sale at Glyph Gallery, Port Fairy. 38 Bank St, Port Fairy, 3284. Her Instagram is

@once_upon_a_chair where you will find plenty of images of her amazing work!

Til next time!

Innerbloom Gardening Therapy

In my last blog post I announced I will be sharing articles from my zine, ‘Grow!’, in this format. The idea being to share the information as far as possible.

So here is the first article in the ‘Under the Spotlight- Gardening’ section from the Autumn, 2024 edition.

Innerbloom Gardening Therapy:

Kim has had a diverse working background and has qualifications in both counselling and horticulture; the perfect combination to transform from a gardener to a Therapeutic Horticulture practitioner.

Her business, Innerbloom Gardening Therapy, offers companionship gardening, workshops, educational sessions for schools and kindergartens, and she is running the ‘Grow Community’ program at the Camperdown Community Garden.

Therapeutic Horticulture is the practice of utilising plants and garden based activities to enhance health and wellbeing for people from all walks of life.

Therapeutic Horticulture can help people in a variety of ways: increasing confidence, stress and anxiety reduction, mental health and wellbeing support, and increasing overall health to name a few.

Asked what her inspiration is Kim replied she is “constantly inspired by nature”. Kim finds trees particularly inspiring and used the Sequoias planted in the Otway Ranges as an example. “Trees offer protection and nurturing” she said.

Her business journey has taught her to focus on the bigger plan by “not sweating the small stuff” and it’s given her greater knowledge of the business world, including having confidence in networking and building relationships with other people in the field.

Her advice for anyone wanting to start a small business is to have a passion for what you are doing.

The Japanese philosophy of ‘Ikigai’ which roughly translates as ‘a reason to live’ is something she believes can be applied to one’s work. Simply put, “love what you do”.

Innerbloom Gardening Therapy is putting the emerging field of Therapeutic Horticulture on the map in South West Victoria. We hope it grows and grows!

Kim can be contacted on:

Info@innerbloom.com.au or 0409 401 529

Also FB and instagram.

Til next time!

Grow!

My focus has been diverted lately, from posting thoughts and info on this platform to putting information and interviews in print form.

I have a long held fascination with the medium of ‘zines’. In my youth they were an underground way of sharing music and alternative news.

I had thought they had died out but was pleasantly surprised to learn they are still around.

Front cover on a new zine, ‘Grow!’ — My zine, ‘Grow!’

It didn’t take me long to decide to make my own.

Ta da! Here is my zine, ‘Grow!’.

As you can see, the focus is gardening and art in the SouthWest area of the state I live in, Victoria.

I chose the focus on the southwest to limit my information input.

The idea is to provide information and inspiration to people interested in gardens and the arts (personally I think gardens are art) to inspire their own personal growth by showing what’s happening and what’s possible.

The printed version will only be available locally at the moment, so I thought I would share the interviews I do with gardeners and artists here in this format.

In the first edition I introduced a clever and inspiring woman starting up a Therapeutic Horticulture business. I will be writing that article up first, then I will write up an interview with another clever and inspiring woman who is creating art in the form of beautifully upholstered furniture and other items.

Once upon a Chair

I’m looking forward to enhancing my zine experience and sharing these amazing stories more widely.

Keep an eye out, my interview with Kim from Innerbloom Gardening Therapy is available soon.

Til next time!

Tree Dahlia

I love these plants, they tower over the garden majestically. Tree Dahlia is an apt name, they can grow as tall as a small tree.

It’s been a good season for them here in Southwest Victoria, it’s been cold but we’ve had no frosts or major wind events. The last few years I’ve lost most of the flowers due to these things.

A clump of flowering tree dahlia — A lovely show

I only have two colours, the ubiquitous lilac and a lovely single white which I’m still waiting for. There are a few different pink colours, and a choice of single or double petals. This just describes how many petals the flowers have, single is self explanatory, the ones pictured are singles. Double just means there are more layers of petals around around the centre.

The flowers hang above our heads in clusters making us have to crane our necks back to look up at them adding to their ‘imperiousness’.

They are a magical delight.

Tree Dahlia flowers looking down on us — Looking up.

Once the flowers have finished over Autumn and early winter the leaves will start to die and the tall stems will start to fade. At this point you can cut them to just above ground level, just above a ‘joint’ and give pieces away to all your friends and family.

Cut the pieces into lengths with three or four joints (you will easily see these as the stems look very much like bamboo. They’re not related at all though)

You can either lay the pieces down flat and cover them lightly with dirt, or stand them up with at least one of the joints underground.

They need to be put in a fairly sheltered position due to their height, mainly to protect from wind, but they are otherwise quite hardy. I rarely fertilise and I haven’t dug up and separated the clump for a few years. I might try that this year, see how I go.

I hope you get to see these beauties at some point.

Til next time!

Bulbs

I finally got around to planting the bulbs I received the other day. Go me!

There are two big questions I always get asked about planting bulbs, namely, ‘which way is up?’ And ‘how far down do they go?’

Bulbs, and often their cousins (?), corms, are fairly easy to distinguish between their ‘up’ side and their ‘down’ side but sometimes they are not.

The pictures I have provided are not the bulbs I planted because I didn’t think about this post until I planted them. D’oh! Rather, they are bulbs I found sitting in my garden.

You will notice they have their roots showing, this is always the best way to tell which is the bottom. Which really just makes sense.

Bulbs with text indicating top and bottom — Bluebell bulbs

(Please ignore my bad editing skills)

Jonquil bulb with text indicating top and bottom — Jonquil bulb

Generally on a bulb there will be a base ‘plate’ where the roots appear and often there is a ‘point’ or ‘tip’ which you can see or feel when you gently rub the bulb.

If you still can’t work out top and bottom, don’t worry! Bulbs and corms are incredible works of nature so if you lay them on their ‘sides’ they will grow up the right way! Planting upside down isn’t recommended, but they will still grow!

Now to the next question, how deep to plant? The general rule of thumb is to plant twice as deep as the bulb is long and the same distance apart. This is just a generalisation but it’s fairly standard. If you can’t find specific information, just do that.

One last thing. You might have noticed my helper’s snout in a photo. Never, ever let your dog, cat, child, eat a bulb. Some are ok but lots are very toxic, such as the very common daffodil bulb. It’s better to be safe than sorry.

Til next time!

Packages Arriving.

It’s very exciting when a package full of plants and bulbs finally gets to you!

Half the time I order plants then forget what I ordered. I knew I had a red Aquilegia, a chocolate coloured Hollyhock, and some bulbs. But I couldn’t remember which bulbs they were 🤔

Well, wonder no more! They are Allium ‘Purple Rain’ (one of my fave Prince songs), Glory of the Sun (Leucocoryne ixiodes), and Peacock Iris (Moraea aristata).

Opened parcel showing plants and bulbs bought online. — Surprise!

The tricky part is to plant them quickly. These ones will have to wait a few days as I’m going on a short vaycay, but never fear, they will get in to the ground!

Til next time!

Autumn

Autumn has well and truly snuck up on us now. Daylight savings has ended so we can look forward to snuggly nights tucked up inside.

A garden path surrounded by wet shrubs — Up the garden path

We’ve finally got a bit of rain here in South West Victoria, hopefully we get just the right amount, not too much as they have been getting further north of here.

The gentle mists are starting to come in of a morning as well, they serve to keep the grass green.

Autumn is a good time to plant, the soil is still warm and there are still plenty of sunny days. I was meant to get a few beds dug to expand my garden, but that hasn’t happened as of writing this today. Never mind, it will happen if it’s going to.

Drops of rain from a shrub’s leaves — Dripping rain

Another thing to think of are collection points for water. We all have containers of some description sitting about that can fill with the water falling from the sky. It’s a good idea to check them sometimes in case critters of any description get water logged, fall in, and drown 😦

On that sad note, I’ll finish and say,

Til next time!

Bee Food

Gardeners have different ways of thinking and doing. One gardener’s weed infested yard is another’s pollinator’s heaven.

I’m the first to admit I’m a lazy gardener so I fall deeply in the latter category.

A lawn filled with Cats Ear weeds — Cat’s Ear

This is my yard. I refuse to mow the lawn, that’s my husband’s job, but if it’s not done I don’t really care.

I love my field of Cats Ear (Hypocaeris radiate), it’s full of bees and butterflies. And that’s the way I like it.

Closer shot of cats ear weeds — Cat’s Ear closer

Til next time!