On Saturday the 13th of July 2013, Permablitz Bay of Plenty were delighted to host the Tauranga OOOOBY Group for a combined event here in Katikati.

Ooooby, for anyone who doesn’t already know, stands for “Out Of Our Own Back Yards”.    You can find out more about the Tauranga Ooooby Group by visiting the Ooooby website – it’s a good place to visit to make connection with likeminded people, and also to view some fascinating links to interesting resources/info/ideas.  And you might even be inspired to create your own Ooooby page …..

We were fortunate to have good weather on Saturday and we had a large, keen group turn up on Saturday morning.  We had members from both the Permablitz network and the Ooooby Group, all keen to meet and learn more about what each other did and how it worked.

We started the day by sharing some thoughts about permaculture, and then we visited Marie’s beautiful garden.  While we were there we had a lot of fun exploring the idea of connections in permaculture design.

The next garden we visited was Hugo and Carolyn’s garden, where the team took advantage of the opportunity to help move the chicken dome into its new position – we also helped the chickens move house!  A great time was had by all!

After a break for lunch, Kate told the story of the Katikati Motel garden and how it came about and the by-now-very-sociable group had the opportunity to look around their third garden.

The Green Swap was held at the end of the day, and was introduced by the Tauranga Ooooby Group, who hold Green Swaps on a regular basis.  It was a fun and friendly opportunity to swap any surplus garden produce / pots / plants / fruit / homemade creations…..we all had a wonderful time and went home delighted with our new-found riches!    What a great idea!  Take along what you have too much of, don’t need, can’t use, and go home with lots of goodies straight from your friends’ backyards.  What’s not to like about that?

Permablitz would like to thank the Ooooby folk for making the trip out to Katikati – we hope our members will get the chance to work together again in the future…..