** Fred and Mien Blom's Place **PO
Box 4072 Alice Springs |
Our Garden
Our garden is on normal eight hundred square metre residential lot on the edge of town. It continues at the back onto a beautiful rocky outcrop, overlooking the MacDonnell Ranges. In September 2001 and in October 2002 we were part of the Open Garden Scheme. It was a very happy and rewarding experience as it gave us a chance to show visitors how, with little cost and effort the removal of the troublesome buffelgrass, which is taking over our countryside at an alarming speed, is rewarded with the regeneration of colourful native shrubs and wildflowers.
Only around the house are other easy to grow, cottage-style plants, which are suitable for our extremely dry climate on an automatic drip-system.
During the dry times many kangaroos and wallabies come down the hill regularly, during the day as well as at night. They are always a delight to watch, especially for our visitors from overseas. Since Fred installed an automatically filling water trough at the back of our property four years ago, they have not attacked the plants and bushes in our garden.
The ‘Open Garden’ weekends proved to be an excellent fund-raiser for charity. One third of the entrée fees is returned to the gardener, which is usually donated to charity. The Steiner School provided freshly brewed coffee and tea and homemade cakes, the Scouts were frying ‘oliebollen’, a well-known Dutch New-Years-Eve treat, and an invalid local identity informed visitors about the benefits of ‘worm juice’ or ‘worm-wee’ as he prefers to call it, for the garden.
With Fred demonstrating his street-organs and the Desert Harmony Singers entertaining the crowd, both weekends became very profitable and enjoyable for everyone involved. (Local choirs and musicians are always looking for opportunities to practice their skills in public!) Volunteers from our local nursing home and the National Pioneer Women Hall of Fame welcomed our visitors and took care of the sale of the tickets, earning the 33% of the gate-takings.
It was heart-warming to see the four hundred and fifty paying visitors as well as the many volunteers enjoying themselves so much. More than two and a half thousand dollars was raised for different organisation on the two weekends.
On top of that the Australia's Open Garden Scheme awarded us $1000-00, which enabled us to buy a picnic-set for the playground we had created for the children in our area in May 1999.
Visit www.opengarden.abc.net.au for futher information.
Please feel free to