Spring Ridge Common

When I was in Victoria last week I visited a unique garden in Fernwood called Spring Ridge Common. It has an interesting mix of herbs and plants that can be used for materials such as willow and bamboo. According to the LifeCycles website:

Springridge Commons is a productive food forest designed with permaculture principles and open to everyone. The site was formerly a gravel lot, and now, thanks to sheet mulching, is flourishing with mulberries, cherry, plum and fig trees, gumi and logan-berry bushes, sage, oregano, mugwort, milk thistle currants, rose bushes and other medicinal, edible, mostly native plants to nourish the community and the soil.

Someone has decorated the arch with this cute homemade heart.

This willow has been harvested, which keeps its size manageable. It's a wonderful renewable resource.

This rosemary is actually from another community garden, but I was amazed to see it in bloom at this time of the year. Apparently it has been so mild that the banana tree in Beacon Hill Park has produced fruit this year.

This is what I was really curious to see--black bamboo. It's really lovely and I think we should plant some at the MOP garden.