Farming Concrete is an initiative to measure and record data from gardens worldwide, allowing measurements of everything from produce harvested to happiness levels and producing reports that clearly display the benefits of these gardens. We know that MUC garden has innumerable benefits, but recording these allows us to quantify them and really see the impact that it has on the environment and the community. We also hope that recording this data will make it easier for future community gardens to get established by raising awareness of their positive impacts. Anyone can access our data, by visiting the 'Mill'. 1. Access the Farming Concrete website via this link. 2. Scroll down to "DOWNLOAD DATA' 3. In the 'Groups' box select 'Melbourne Uni Community Gardens. 3. The search results will look something like this: 4. Use the tabs at the top to see the different data that has been recorded (we are currently recording 'harvest count' and 'landfill waste diversion by weight'). Alternatively, you can create your own account here and add the MUC garden to your personal account. This will allow you to download detailed data that we have uploaded. Once you've made an account, follow these instructions: 1. Under the 'Barn' tab, scroll down and MUC garden should be listed under 'Your Gardens'. Click 'add data' to access it. 2. Under the garden's page, you will be able to see all data we have collected. Please don't add your own data - we will record this at the garden and add it collectively. If you would like to be involved with data collection and recording for the garden as a whole, please get in touch! 3. Click 'add data' next to a topic you are interested in, for example 'landfill waste diversion by weight'. Not all categories will have data available. On the right of the page, click 'download data' to open an Excel spreadsheet, or click 'download report' to download a report automatically formulated by the Farming Concrete website. 4. There you have it! We will endeavour to put a monthly report up at the garden, so keep an eye out for it.
WORDS & PHOTOS: Julianna Rozek On yet another gloriously warm spring day, Horticultured ventured out to CERES, joined by Engineers Without Borders Unimelb. CERES Community Park is also known as the Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies (not Ceres the Roman agricultural goddess, or dwarf planet). Their main goal is to promote environmental sustainability - something both of our clubs are highly interested in. CERES do this through a range of initiatives including community gardens, educational workshops on everything from beekeeping to kombucha making, renewable energy demonstrations, and developing and trialling new green technologies. While there is heaps to see and do on the 9-acre site, the main activity of the day was a tour of the sustainable water initiatives with Nick the site manager. CERES harvest and manage water from their carpark, sealed roads, roofs and the broader catchment area. This water is used to water their organic farm, in the Merri Table cafe and in a dam supporting biodiversity. Nick is directly involved in many of the projects and gave us a great understanding of not only what they are doing and why, but also the challenges. One example is the permeable pavement which CERES have been investigating in conjunction with industry and university partners. While it looks great on paper - roads which allow water to filter through and reduce stormwater peaks and floods - the reality is expensive and hard to maintain. Without labour intensive management, permeable roads can quickly become impermeable. Recently re-surfacing a main service road required CERES to align reality with their goals of environmental sustainability. The solution was a convention impermeable road made of partially recycled tar and printer cartridges, with features to direct most of the runoff to a dam. CERES is a very valuable urban site for investigating new technologies. The opportunity afforded by 9 acres of land in an inner-city suburb, passionate employees and generous donors and partners is rare in a city of ever-increasing development and density.
One of the themes that surfaced in the tour was that CERES should be a model for the future and innovation, but short-term grant funding and harsh regulatory compliance meant that they continually rely on tried-and-tested solutions and technologies. If we are serious about addressing the problems presented by climate change and expanding populations perhaps we need to show a little more bravery. Thank you Nick for being so generous with your knowledge while showing us the water-saving initiatives operating at CERES. We had a great time and learned lots from walking around the gardens with you. |
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