Village Homes Realty
Landscape Update: October 2020
Over the winter, we have been finalising the concept plans for community garden clusters 2A and 2B, which were released on the Ecovillage website in late September.
I’ve been working with Permaculture designer Byron Joel from Oak Tree Designs who has been assisting me with fruit tree selection for the covered orchards in the community gardens. These decisions have been based on Byron and PB Foreman’s research for Mike, which covered the quantities of fruit required per cluster and a selection of species that provide year-round fruiting and variety. The site-specific placement of the trees distributes the fruit throughout the garden and maximises winter sun. With a little work and a little love, Ecovillage residents will be able to enjoy a selection of fruit all year from their collective orchards.
We had hoped to be further progressed with the stormwater / drainage basins and swale planting throughout the Ecovillage but have had to postpone this until Autumn 2021 due to the extended wet weather and the subsequent delayed resumption of Stage 1-3 civil works. The planting of street trees and the community garden spaces will also commence in Autumn 2021, after both the summer heat and civil construction are behind us.
The Piazza is coming together beautifully with the magnificent granite walls crafted by local stonemasons Stone Age Construction now completed. These painstaking works of art anchor a cohesive palette of natural, local materials and have been designed as a visual guide from the main entryway off Bussell Highway to the Piazza and the Village Square. The stonemasons have just completed a 70m long wall in the Village Square that runs along the swale and frames the space. It doesn’t take much to imagine a glorious sunny day not long from now when people are strolling the pathways of the Village Square, seated on stone walls or sprawled on the lawn under shady trees listening to local musicians playing in the pub. It’s a pretty landscape indeed!
