Displays of veg, ‘Woolly Pockets’, and Melbourne’s Sustainability Festival

The Sustainable Living Festival is on in Melbourne at the moment (http://www.slf.org.au/)  and a friend and I thought we’d check out a couple of the things going on as part of the festival.

This trip into Melbourne’s CBD was in part motivated by a marketer who made contact with me to see if I’d be interested in checking out some of her clients products.  These products – Woolly Pockets, were a feature of a carbon positive house which is on display in Melbourne’s city square.

I have to admit that the older I get, the more interested I get in good functional design. So the idea of a carbon positive house with ‘woolly pockets’ on its exterior was rather intriguing.  And this is it:

The woolly pockets look like felt but are actually made from recycled plastics.  Designed for creating wall gardens, they are flexible pots with a wicking type watering system.  Aside from looking pretty they can also create a cooling effect inside a house if used, as above, on a sliding door.  Breeze on the wet pots cools the area inside.  Cool eh?

While I loved that idea, for me the (almost) bigger attraction was that they looked great filled with herbs.  Imagine a whole wall of these things with plants cascading out of them.  Potentially very beautiful.

The same company also make these other more plastic looking wall pots (and yes that is the bedroom on the right of the photo).

These were inside the carbon positive house.  Now I want a wall full for my kitchen (although I may need a skylight……and a new kitchen first).

The main reason I was so interested in wall pots is for my kid’s school.  There are some unsightly pillars and fences there that I think could do with a bit of living colour, and something like Woolly pockets could work really well.  (Hint, hint woolly pocket people).

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The other exhibit we looked at the Sustainable Living Festival was the Town Hall veggie patch.

These beautiful displays of veg are growing outside Melbourne’s Town Hall, and all in pots.  Although at first glance you would never realise.

These displays are created by loads of 15-20cm pots crammed together and with wooden edging attached.  This picture shows how they did it:

Incredibly simple isn’t it?  But really effective.  The thing that amazed me most was the pot with 3 corn growing (and looking really healthy) in it.  I wonder what they use for fertiliser….