Our nature strip has been a great success. At times, when the kids are asleep and I’m avoiding doing the housework, I just spend a little while watching passers-by stop and consider what it is exactly that they’re looking at. Some look around as if they are on hidden camera and this is some sort of a set up, some read the sign explaining that this food is free but for the most part people just pause and look at what is growing with a sort of interested/amused look. This gives me a such a cheer as it shows me that the educative purpose, making people stop and consider the use of space and food, is working.
But we’ve been aware that this is an idea that needs to spread and this weekend that is exactly what happened. Sure we lost a box so the title should be ‘and then there was 7’ but we’ve now got 6 boxes with about 6 square metres of growing area within 20 metres of our house. The box building process in our house has improved greatly over the months. Not only do we have some reclaimed wood to work with but also the whole family gets involved.
First I build the boxes and then the ‘Treading Lightly’ quality assurance team swings into action to make sure that the boxes are solid and without defect.
They are then measured for size.
Before being sealed, prepared and placed in position
Then we fill them and even try to to keep some seedlings ready to go so that by the end of the day there is not only a box but also something in it. We’ve also done some native beds where the residents aren’t keen for a box. This involves an awful lot of clearing of weeds and replenishing of soil but once they get some native grasses and shrubs in the ground and a covering of mulch they look brilliant.
So it’s been a great weekend and it’s been awesome to see people started to take ownership of the process and really make their nature strips their own. Don’t get me wrong we’re still doing a lot of digging ourselves but as Nikki said after I was complaining about how exhausted I was, to spend the weekend talking and working with neighbours to change grass nature strips to free food gardens is pretty much my idea of a perfect weekend.
A Life of Treading Lightly 