One of the things about moving to a blank canvas (like our place in Yass), is that there is so much to learn, plan and physically do; We are still struggling with getting that balance right. Sometimes we just feel rushed and caught up in the moment.

Of course it does not help that I am leaving my family and travelling to Sydney each week for a few days – and it is so hard when, on the Monday and Friday I look outside and see there is so much to do, but I have to concentrate on my work (Yes I am lucky that I can work from home Monday and Friday – but it is still hard).

It has taken a while but I do have a plan for our one acre. The plan has existed (been forming) over the past few months in my mind. Well I think now that I have done it – it is not to scale but it is a start – a first draft.

1st Draft of the Zones – PDF
From here I have set up everything in 9 zones.
Zone 1: The house and living area,there is some “white space” around the house and this is lving area, the place where I will have the extend balcony, the BBQ’s and gatherings. But it will also be productive eg I plan a pergola on the northern side of the house with grape vines growing. Also there will be a garage out back with awnings but really we will not be placing any car down here (well maybe under an awning). In the garage there will be the bar/brew setup, library, entertainment area and workshop.

Zone 2: This will be the main production ares for vegetables the space is approx 30 metres x 6. This will be made up of a series of garden beds most raised by rock logs (see previous post for explanation of rock logs) as while we do have some top soil you barely have to scratch the surface before hitting clay. Of course a lot of focus is currently here trying to get all the beds in before spring.

Zone 3: The orchard is also of focus right at the moment as we are trying to plant what we can now. Hopefully this will have the added advantage of getting some roots established before summer. But also every year we wait is another year before that plant produces fruit. Generally we are getting 2-3 year old plants most in pots from out local nursery (but some will be bare root stock).

Zone 4: Driveways and swales and natve cover. What does all the mean – well I guess this is really a bit of a “hodge podge” of stuff. In this area I will design where the car bay is or maybe as petroil goes up that will be bike bay! But around that I want the area to be native and also food producing natives where possible.
Now there will also be a series of swales here to catch and direct water away from the house. I need these as the house is 30 metres from the front fence and the land slopes down so when it rains we have the water directed to us under the house, so they will a collect some water and and more importantly direct water around the house. On the swales we will have natives. The paths will be forest mulch.

Zone 5: This is simply where the olive trees are – three already planted, but I do have fence space I can use and if I extend the zone slightly I will have room for sugar maples – now that is a long term project (30-40 years)!

Zone 6: Animals, probably the scariest of all the projects at the moment. We were planning chickens and pigs (love my bacon) but after doing some reading I think goats are the way to go (milk, cheese, and meat), maybe I will think about pigs after everything else is established.

Zone 7: This is generally undecided land or where we are still formulating idas, but down the back I have planeted a few nut trees, one idea we are toying with is creating a ‘creek’ of some sort down the side of the block that will run into the pond (zone 8 )

Zone 8: This is our water feature… a largish pond. Maybe some food producing plants. we will just have to wait and see Also this is where I am thinking of having the bees.

Zone 9: Dispersment Area, this is where out Biolytic unit disperses its waste liquid. We are not allowed to have editable plants here so this will also become a native vegetation patch, so far I have a few gum trees, paperbark and bottle brush tube stock there.

So there it is – that’s the plan at the moment.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 11th, 2008 at 1:18 am and is filed under Gardening, Land. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.