Red Hill

This project was divided into two parts — one we called the ‘re-use garden’ and the other the ‘edible sclerophyll’. The client for this project was the Eastern Metropolitan Regional Council (EMRC). These two gardens were installed at the Red Hill waste management facility as a part of the education centre on site. The gardens demonstrate some of the ways we can use materials from our societies’ waste streams to create beautiful and productive gardens.

As the name suggests, the ‘re-use garden’ demonstrates material re-use. The ‘edible schlerophyll’ garden is perhaps a bit more opaquely named. Schlerophyllous vegetation is that hard-leaved vegetation characteristic of Mediterranean climates. The ‘edible schlerophyll’ garden, while not exclusively made up of this type of vegetation, is in a clearing of native (fairly degraded) bushland and incorporates Western Australian natives and hardy food plants. This kind of garden demonstrates the potential of these low resource use native / productive gardens for the Hills areas of Perth.

One of the pleasures of this job was working with ‘urbanite’ — an affectionate name for discarded concrete, mostly from 100mm slabs. As you will see from the photos, it is a very effective replacement for stone (and usually free apart from the cost of transport). The best part is that we can re-use something that would otherwise take space in landfill or require additional energy to be recycled.