Bellis Website To Become Part of Australian National Archive

Bellis drone aerial shot April 2019 - 1 — Few gardens resemble lettuce or cotton monocultures, they are more diverse and they are surrounded by a patchwork quilt of suburban gardens, tree-lined streets, parks and reserves – reservoirs of beneficial insects useful for gardening. Bellis takes one step further. Image: Mick Fanning, Cameraperson.

The State Library of Queensland and the National Library of Australia to copy, retain and provide public online access to the Bellis website – the online publication of Bellis, Brisbane’s award-winning sustainable house and garden – under the Copyright Act 1968 in the PANDORA Archive. The public will have online access to this website through the Australian Web Archive at the National Library of Australia which shall preserve it and make it available to the public in perpetuity.

Bellis exists in order to demonstrate how ordinary people with average skills and a median income can live affordably and sustainably using mostly Australian technology.

In 2003, an elderly Queenslander house in Wynnum was retrofitted for sustainability and named after the English lawn weed Bellis perennis.

On being undeclared from the sewer system by the Lord Mayor of Brisbane, Bellis was then declared a state government experiment by the Queensland Department of the Environment, the property becoming re-classed as a rural block, an 815 square metre slice of Queensland countryside surrounded by suburban Brisbane.

Open Day — Bellis has been opening to the public each year, initially with Solar House Day, then Sustainable House Day, Australia’s Open Garden Scheme, and now with support by the Perennial Poppies Group Inc.

This website evolved in response to public enquiries for information about sustainable living and a desire to provide access to useful information without wasting paper. This website was constructed by, and continues to be supported by, Jeff Poole, a conservationist and an active co-conspirator in this sustainable living project.

This website, and its supporting public Facebook page for Jerry Coleby-Williams, are currently followed in 109 countries and its owner responds to an average of 10,000 enquiries a year. Enquiries peaked during the autumn of 2020 in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

“Jerry Coleby-Williams is an incredibly well informed horticulturalist from the faraway land of Australia. His site is loaded with excellent resources”
Dr Kevin Curran, University of San Diego (15.4.16).

Visitor word cloud 2 — Bellis visitor word cloud.

NAME: J. A. Coleby-Williams RHS, Dip. Hort. (Kew), NEBSM
POSITION: Owner of Website, Freelance Curator, Writer, Broadcaster
ORGANISATION: Bellis, Brisbane’s Sustainable House and Garden
EMAIL: bellis_brisbane@me.com

3 Comments Add yours

John & Colin. says:

04/07/2020 at 2:39 pm

Congratulations.

John Lee says:

04/07/2020 at 2:42 pm

Excellent idea, and resource, thank you.

John & Colin.

Eva says:

05/07/2020 at 8:43 am

Well deserved and what a wonderful legacy you have both left. I look forward to a better future for us all from your work.