Addi Moves is an amazing community initiative supported by Mindgardens Neuroscience Network, NSW Health and UNSW Sydney. It is a free of charge exercise facility for people form refugee or asylum seeker backgrounds located within the Addison road Community Centre in Marrickville. The premises had an undercover entrance/veranda and a small garden out front that was looking very overgrown and sad.
Our brief was to revive the garden, replace a section of picket fence and add a gate. The Addi moves staff had coordinated a small group of volunteers, mostly co-workers and peers in the exercise physiology and psychology fields. On the first day they got stuck straight in clearing the old garden of overgrown grasses and weeds while Kyle put in some ACQ (non arsenic) treated pine sleeper edging. The garden was then filled with a native garden soil mix and topped with tree mulch from Australian native landscapes (https://anlscape.com.au/).
The existing Bougainvillea that had grown its spiky vines all over the place was cut back and trained onto a wire trellis running between the veranda posts.
We cut a rounded profile on the top of the pickets to give a soft welcoming appearance. Then then all the timber was sanded and oiled with organoil decking oil: (https://prep-productions.com/organoil-products/) and a post and some rails were installed.
Kyle then came back for a third day finish the picket fence and gate install and give it all a second coat of oil.
The end result is a beautiful mostly native garden and striking but warm and welcoming custom cypress pine fence and entrance.
permaculture patch Back in the winter of 2022 we were asked to come and have a look at this project in the Northern Suburbs of Sydney. This property was a standard Australian suburban block with some established gardens, lawns, and a swimming pool on a quarter acre or 1000 square meters. While this had served the family well in the past the pool was now rarely used, and the owners were keen to be growing more food in their backyard.
“The greatest change we need to make is from consumption to production, even if on a small scale, in our own gardens. If only 10% of us do this, there is enough for everyone. Hence the futility of revolutionaries who have no gardens, who depend on the very system they attack, and who produce words and bullets, not food and shelter.” – Bill Mollison
“An introduction to permaculture”. Book by Bill Mollison, 1991.
Animals play a crucial role in sustainable and permaculture systems and are a great thing to add to a suburban permaculture backyard. They help to create closed loops by converting Kitchen scraps, weeds, bugs and insects and garden bed trimmings into eggs, meat, and manure.
Building a greener future, one project at a time.
Tierra Projects acknowledges the traditional owners of Gai-Mariagal country on whose unceded lands we live and work. We acknowledge their frontier wars, their fallen warriors and their elders past present and emerging.
LICENCE NO. 386521C • ABN 319 080 403 45
© 2025 Tierra Projects. All rights reserved.
