Bello Food Gardening paintings inspired by the garden
The Bello Food Gardening project is an art-filled food gardening guide specifically for Bellingen NSW, Australia, and surrounding lowland areas. These are poorly covered by conventional gardening guides. I began this during Covid, from March 2020, in response to so many people panicking about their food supply and planting seasonally inappropriate food, and plants that do not do well locally. The guide is a climate-resilience gift to the community, with all info available online and plans for a cost-price book to be made available.
Artworks
Why fill a climate resilience gardening guide with art?
One of the big lessons from those covid lockdown times was a reminder that life is too precious to be dull, bleak, souless.
Delight is important in the everyday.
If we have forgotten to slow down, savour and enjoy each moment, what did we isolate for?
This guide is meant to be b e a u t i f u l. As well as practical.
Articles
In depth food growing articles based on interviews with local experts. Now on their own website at www.bellofoodgardening.com
When will the art be available?
The entire collection of over 70 original artworks will become available when the food growing information articles are complete and the final project can be officially launched, hopefully in book form. All going well, this will be near the end of 2025 or sometime in 2026. Please join the art studio newsletter so you don’t miss this announcement.
Artworks are A5 (with a few A3 exceptions)
Watercolour and Indian ink on 180 or 300gsm watercolour paper
The entire painting collection so far
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- Eggplant and other disasters
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- Cleaning up - loo roll, soap, luffa (and firestarters)
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- Herbal teas
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- Herbs
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- Asparagus
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- Carrot, parsnip, salsify & burdock
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- Broccoli and cauliflower
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- Beetroot and other cool season bulbs
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- The onion family
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- Large fruit detail - banana, plantain and jackfruit
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- Vine fruits – grapes & passionfruit
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- Vine fruits – dragonfruit & kiwifruit
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- Native berries detail -
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- Berries detail - strawberry, mulberry, blueberry, blackberry
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- Bread grains and rice
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- Secrets of avocado
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- Nuts – imported: pecan, saba, candlenut
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- Nuts – native: macadamia & bunya
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- Yams – native yam
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- High protein leafy greens - moringa, sweetleaf and aibika
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- Salad greens
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- Asian greens
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- Garlic
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- Potato
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- Beyond potato - arrowroot and cassava
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- Beyond potato - taro and other waterlovers
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- Don't stop at potatoes
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- Okra and rosella
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- Capsicum and chilli
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- Cucumber and friends
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- Peanuts
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- Radish
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- Corn
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- Why grow spinach
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- Dear sweet potato
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- Let's talk about zucchini
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- Mouthwatering melons
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- Prizewinning pumpkins
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- Foraging
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- Warm season beans - perennials
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- Warm season beans - annuals
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- Seed saving
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- Almost tomatoes - tree tomatoes, husk tomatoes and golden berries
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- We can grow tomatoes
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- The ginger family - ginger, turmeric and galangal
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- The sunflower family - yacon, fartichokes and sunflower seeds
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- Kale
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- Cool season beans - broad beans
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- Something sweet
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- The daily brew - tea and coffee
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- For the bees
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- Chillies and capsicums
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- Warm season planting
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- The ants are farmers
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- A few more things about citrus trees
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- A few things about citrus trees
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- Intro to edible weeds
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- Last chance for snowpeas
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- Pigeon peas
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- Time for fruit trees
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- Why grow spinach - an intro
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- Brassicas and cabbage moth
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- Secrets of compost
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- Feed the soil
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- What grows easily in pots
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- Planting out your seedlings
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- Building a garden
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- What grows well - cool season
In the very beginning
from March 2020 to July 2021, articles and their accompanying artworks were published in the (now ceased) weekly ilovebelloshire newsletter and on their Local Stories website section as ‘From the Garden’. It was one of their most popular columns.
So they did a story on me…
ilovebelloshire interview
The face behind ‘From the Garden’.
