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Rooting for the vandals: a routine house inspection has made a permaculture garden in a Melbourne suburb the setting for a debate about the politics of food production.

Article Excerpt
On 24 April this year, following a routine house inspection, the tenants of a house in suburban Melbourne were issued with a Breach of Duty notice ordering them to restore their garden to its original condition within fourteen days or provide compensation ($2100) and risk eviction. What the landlord described in this letter as the 'loss and damage' to his extensive patch of lawn was its transformation over two years into a thriving oasis, virtually undetectable from the street, in a (formerly) unremarkable quarter acre block.

The tenants of 'Thomas Street' (as the house is known), Cat Moore, Adrian Wedd and Dan Palmer, have created a permaculture garden--complete with chickens, vegetables, sprouts and wheatgrass, abundant fruit trees and a pond for the ducks--which, at its peak, supplies them with 75 per cent of their food needs. The landlord is concerned that future tenants will not want to deal with the ongoing maintenance of such a garden, a view the current tenants can understand. As such, they are 'bending over backwards till our heads touch the ground' in their attempts to be reasonable about the situation--after, all, one of permaculture's central tenets is to turn problems into opportunities.

Unfortunately, the landlord has been unwilling to respond to their requests to meet face to face and discuss possible solutions, including their most recent 'Proposal 3', which offers to raise and set aside (in a third party account) the money to 'reverse engineer' the garden prior to leaving, reinstating the lawn if necessary or, more hopefully, lending their time, skills and labour to establish a low-maintenance, long-term garden. The tenants feel particularly determined...

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