There has been some interest in getting the next round of Maleny Permablitzes happening again, perhaps every two months.

If you are interested in participating, please contact Sustainable Maleny (info [at] sustainablemaleny.org) or Jason Carmichael (samson139 [at] hotmail.com).

Permablitzes will be another arm of our food security initiative, complementing our community gardens (of which Bridge Creek Garden is our first). A permablitz will focus energy on an individual household garden - a group of people maintaining what's already been established or creating something new.

We first heard about permablitzes from one of the founders of Energy Bulletin, Adam who lives in Melbourne. Check their website (http://www.permablitz.net) for info and pictures. SM thinks it's a great idea to get people working together on a household garden, having fun & increasing the resilience of the local food community.

The idea is that someone nominates a garden to work on, an inspection is done by somebody who knows something about gardening, a simple plan is produced, materials ordered if needed, recruits sought, then half a day spent on the project with morning or afternoon tea supplied by the householder. Participants' hours are logged and the expectation is that hours spent on your garden are likewise donated elsewhere in the system by yourself. Those that don't need a permablitz on their own garden can still participate in other gardens & donate their hours towards somebody who has a greater gardening need.

There are probably two main types of gardens - those that are already established and just need a group of people to weed/maintain/replant etc. and then there are non-existent gardens that need to be brought into creation. For this second type we need to access the skills of somebody who can do a basic permaculture design and supply a list of materials to be gathered. If you can help with this we'd like to hear from you.

This project is still pending as we don't have the numbers to get it happening yet. Everybody is busy so it's better to have more people offering a little bit of time rather than a few doing all the work, especially as we have so many other things on the go. If you'd like to register interest for either giving or receiving a permablitz then please contact us.