22 July, 2014

Follow us on Facebook!

At last, less verbose yet stunningly visual posts are now available to you, our insatiable readers, on Facebook.  I feel like we're following the trajectory of Samuel Beckett.  Soon it will be down to a Twitter feed pregnant with meaningful silence and a photo of a wombat contemplating a rock, maybe a haiku or two about onion weed.

Meanwhile, contemplate the magnificence of the recent work by the City of Darebin at Caddaye's Corner.  Great stuff from landscape architect Nadia Combe and her team, this adds so much to the precinct and has used many of the species planted on the Merri Common to give everything a much needed sense of continuity and character.  Wonderful to have such a consultative approach to the neighbourhood's development from our Council's officers - thank you.

16 April, 2014

Autumn Working Bee and Barbeque - Sunday, 4 May 2014

The large section of the Indigenous Garden laid bare by the Metro cabling works and platform repair will need some hard work and TLC now that the grimmest part of summer is over. Metro management has funded replacement plants and has made sure that mulch was spread over the whole area, including large segments of Merri Common, to ready the soil for replanting. 

And so a Re-Planting Day has been  scheduled for:

Sunday, 4 May, from 10.00 till 2.00

Come to the Merri Common with some gardening tools - wheelbarrows, shovels, spades, picks - and an appetite for a BBQ lunch!

09 April, 2014

Plans for the Charles and Clarke St interface with the Station precinct

In February the Stationeers submitted an entry to the "Transforming Darebin Competition" for the Rucker Ward category.  Sadly we missed out on this terrific initiative, but below is the concept - we aim to push on with this through landscaping efforts and arts-based grant submissions in future.



24 March, 2014

Metro and the Indigenous Garden - a Sorry Tale of Woe

By now most will be aware of the devastation wreaked on the Indigenous Garden by various Metro works - first in installing a new, additional access pit to underground infrastructure in the middle of the garden bed, and then in undertaking repairs to Platform 1.

awesome
While access by VicTrack and Metro to their own land to undertake maintenance is perfectly acceptable, our plantings left specific, agreed access corridors for maintenance staff to access existing pits and infrastructure, which have been entirely ignored.  We question whether the extent of damage inflicted was truly necessary.

As a result, the considerable outputs of community and contract labour, along with grant funding from the City of Darebin, have been all but swept away - we estimate only 20% of our plantings remain intact on this difficult site.

Apologies to everyone who has put in so much hard work on this garden only to see it substantially destroyed. Metro has apologised for the repeated error and will fund the replacement of the plant stock. We have recommended that in future Metro work teams first consult our committee, meet on site and gain assistance in navigating the crew around plantings.