28:
Yesterday afternoon, being Sunday, we rode our bikes out past the town centre and over the train tracks to the flatter, red-dirt suburban streets of Nulsen, where the Esperance Community Garden were having their weekly get together. On the Pink Lake Road side we met Sonny Graham doing some weeding with his hoe. Sonny is a senior Ngadju man we’d already tried contacting, who very kindly took the time to show us around the rest of the garden and give a run down of the edibles they’ve got growing so far (quandongs and kangaroo apple, rosemary, olives). Over a cup of tea with Sonny and another volunteer, we talked about what they’d like the garden to become, and what Esperance was like some sixty years ago when Sonny first arrived from the Nullarbor. At that time places like Cape Le Grand were still ‘real wild’, and local men were the ones showing him what parts of the landscape could be eaten.
March flies are suddenly out in force, and seem to like the garden too.
(The garden’s less-cultivated side, and the empty lot next door. Before running out of money, as they do, the developers managed to cut down a row of large trees that had provided shade and mositure retention.)
08:
Behind the scenes of our work currently in Experiments on Plant Hybridization at Dianne Tanzer Gallery in Melbourne www.diannetanzergallery.net.au
Tessa Zettel & Karl Khoe (Makeshift)
LOST CULTIVARS SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE
Batch no. 1: ‘Crown Pea’ (Group of 24)
Participants are invited to join an amateur horticultural adventure to rediscover lost cultivars of edible and otherwise useful plants. In consultation with botanists and seed libraries, Zettel & Khoe will endeavour – for a length of time determined by the number of subscribers – to locate seeds of a given ‘vanished’ plant for distribution to members. If within that time the desired cultivar remains elusive, another closely related rarity will be substituted in its place.
The Lost Cultivars Subscription Service hereby sets out on its first expedition, in search of the ‘Crown Pea’ (or ‘Rose’ or ‘Mummy’ pea), a curious variety of edible pea that after 300 years of cultivation in Europe, fell out of favour with the shift from hand-picking to industrial agriculture – for which its dense, crown-like crop and ‘fasciated’ stem, the result of a genetic abnormality once studied by Mendel, were no longer desirable traits. The Lost Cultivars Subscription Service looks forward to a time akin to the 1800s, when peas were commonly available in a vast range of such quirky varieties (unscrupulous seed catalogues not infrequently announcing new ones that could be better described as ‘old friends with new names’), that along with their ease of cultivation ensured a succession of fresh produce over an extended season from May to October.
08:
Behind the scenes of our work currently in Experiments on Plant Hybridization at Dianne Tanzer Gallery in Melbourne www.diannetanzergallery.net.au
Tessa Zettel & Karl Khoe (Makeshift)
LOST CULTIVARS SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE
Batch no. 1: ‘Crown Pea’ (Group of 24)
Participants are invited to join an amateur horticultural adventure to rediscover lost cultivars of edible and otherwise useful plants. In consultation with botanists and seed libraries, Zettel & Khoe will endeavour – for a length of time determined by the number of subscribers – to locate seeds of a given ‘vanished’ plant for distribution to members. If within that time the desired cultivar remains elusive, another closely related rarity will be substituted in its place.
The Lost Cultivars Subscription Service hereby sets out on its first expedition, in search of the ‘Crown Pea’ (or ‘Rose’ or ‘Mummy’ pea), a curious variety of edible pea that after 300 years of cultivation in Europe, fell out of favour with the shift from hand-picking to industrial agriculture – for which its dense, crown-like crop and ‘fasciated’ stem, the result of a genetic abnormality once studied by Mendel, were no longer desirable traits. The Lost Cultivars Subscription Service looks forward to a time akin to the 1800s, when peas were commonly available in a vast range of such quirky varieties (unscrupulous seed catalogues not infrequently announcing new ones that could be better described as ‘old friends with new names’), that along with their ease of cultivation ensured a succession of fresh produce over an extended season from May to October.
30:
Well, the shifting garden at 4A has now packed up and shifted elsewhere (or a variety of elsewheres actually). Thanks to everyone who stopped and had a look, took home a beetroot or kale seedling or a seed packet, or sat down for a cup of tea and a lotus chip and a chat about gardens, cities and other good things. Thank you also to the marvellous team at 4A – Aaron, Summar, Ping, Yu ye, & Sam who did their best to keep everything nicely watered. We’ve amassed quite an archive of photos and will be posting them here over the next little while, in the meantime here are a few from the final weeks.
  
  
ABOVE RIGHT: lotus chips and taro cake at the closing party.
30:
A nice little article on the Garden (by Lucy Fokkema) on the Throw Shapes blog – read it here.
14:
Saturday’s workshop saw home-made pumpkin scones with rosella jam & Western Sydney backyard rosellas, lots of tea (lemongrass from the garden and jasmine flowers from China), and various drawings of people’s next-door neighbour’s gardens/architectural plans for what we could do in the gallery. … And the beginnings of a seed exchange, which will continue to take shape over the next week.
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08:
Make-do Garden City is up and running, with our starter crop of eggplant, okra, chilli, lemongrass, spinach, various lettuces etc. all doing remarkably well in their greenhouse-shopfront. In the Do Garden, the lotus is dying back for winter but still making an effort to look lovely. We’ve begun unpacking furniture and other assorted things from our cart so conversations can soon get underway there.
There’s a workshop/event happening this Saturday 11am – 1pm, a good time to come down if you haven’t yet visited. It’s going to be a fairly loose affair involving tea and talking, with drawing and seed-swapping on the side. Feel free to bring along your own edible plants, or seeds, and/or drawing materials (although rice paper and ink will be provided).
Here’s how it looked at the beginning:
and some details
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Stay tuned for more images next week.
Photos by Arunas / Tessa Zettel & Karl Khoe
21:
Our new solo exhibition at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art opens this Thursday. It will be evolving for the next six weeks, so please do drop by later and see where it ends up travelling to – more details below:
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TESSA ZETTEL & KARL KHOE
MAKE-DO GARDEN CITY
4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art
181 – 187 Hay St. Sydney
26 March – 8 May 2010 / Open Tues – Sat, 11am – 6pm
Opening Thursday 25 March, 6 – 8pm
4A’s ground floor turns into Make-do Garden City, a place where fictional Chinese gardens of the seventeenth century meet with the personal histories and potential sustainable futures of Sydney’s Chinatown. Tessa Zettel & Karl Khoe will be conducting a six-week program of talking, making and growing that explores new ways of remembering and recreating the city around us.
Members of the local community are invited in to contribute stories of gardens – real, past or imagined – in exchange for edible plants grown by the artists. As conversations unfold throughout the exhibition, the artists will produce a series of experimental domestic micro-farms that respond to the places and ideas being discussed. This timely project investigates what it means to live in this city in the context of urban expansion, climate change and food crisis.
Visit Make-do Garden City for a chance to catch the artists tending their installation, or join them for one of two informal workshops involving seed-swapping, drawing, tea and conversation.
Public Programs:
Saturday, 10th April, 11am – 1pm
& Saturday, 8th May, 11am – 1pm (Closing event)
www.4a.com.au
www.makeshift.com.au
Make-do Garden City has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
13:
2 pieces of makeshift news this week:
1. We’re the current resident artists at the Lock-Up in Newcastle, and will be living and working here until Tuesday the 22nd of Sept, so please drop by if you’re in the area.
2. We’re also part of a group show called Breathing Space happening at the Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, which opens on Friday the 18th of Sept. It runs until the 25th of October.
10:
The Hanging Gardens got a lovely feature article & picture in the Sydney Morning Herald today, in the ‘Eco’ pages of the main news section. Read it all here. Then come on down with your plants, still a couple of days to go!
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