Altona Community Garden In A Box
We engaged in the Altona in a Box community art project at Louis Joel Arts and Community Centre in September. We were provided with a recycled wooden pallet box, which we could decorate to share our stories, experiences and images.
This time, we used two boxes and tried to represent beautiful Altona Nature including wicking bed style gardens. A wicking bed is water efficient raised garden bed with built-in reservoir that supplies water from the bottom up. These boxes show our aim to of care for the Altona community and show the connection between the Altona community, gardens and ocean through the water.
We started to collect the materials, trying to recycle what we had and use things from nature such as sand, wood chip, metal offcuts, seaweed, coffee grounds, and other rubbish.
We used home-made clay, made from cornstarch and bicarbonate soda to make little creatures and vegetables. The colors were made using natural ingredients such as yellow from mustard powder, pink from cayenne pepper and brown from coffee grounds.
We used two boxes to show the layer of ground. The first box shows above the ground which is beautiful Altona village. The picture is Sargood street. The second box shows underground connecting to beautiful Altona beach.
A giant carrot and big Altona tree.
The branches were collected from a crab apple tree in a member's garden. We also invited the words from our community group members, which represent our community and group.
Free, fresh, local ingredients!!
The box was displayed at Louis Joel Arts and Community Centre from the 15th to the 28th of September.