By Green Connect general manager Kylie Flament
Thirteen years after we met, my husband and I finally purchased our first home. It had everything we wanted – it was walkable to a school, train station and nature; the neighbours were all lovely, there was no need to renovate. Before we even put in an offer, we had made plans to turn the lawns and rose bushes into vegetable gardens, and adopt some chickens and bees.
There was only one small problem… we had never gardened before!
One of the perks of my job at Green Connect is being able to sign up for every new tour, workshop and service we offer. Resources are
tight, so I’m always a paying customer, happy to soak up the knowledge of my incredible permaculture colleagues.
I did a chicken-keeping workshop with Jacqui, a bee-keeping workshop with Claire, an introduction to permaculture weekend with John and a native gardening workshop with Narelle.
I came home full of enthusiasm and ideas. We bought four chickens, named Doris, Phoebe, Mannie and Coco by our kids, who spent hours picking up, putting down, feeding, following them around and talking to them. We had built-in babysitters for six months before the novelty wore off.
I bought a beehive and suit and tools and would sit and watch the girls (yes, girls – a story for another day) flying in and out of the hive, cup of tea in hand, smile on my face.
When it came to the garden though, I had a tough time.
Many of my first decisions went horribly awry – I managed to put the compost bin in the shadiest part of the garden, my kale was covered in white cabbage caterpillars, my passionfruit vine died inexplicably, as did all the herbs we had proudly planted in the front yard and told the neighbours to help themselves to, and after six months, kikuyu grass had taken over all of my vegetable beds despite daily weeding.
Happily, the Green Connect team had been toying with the idea of offering backyard garden consultations.
“Sign me up!” I cried.
The wonderful Claire came and walked around the garden with me, talking about what I wanted (lots of produce, and a tidyish looking front yard so that I didn’t scare the neighbours off growing their own food), what I had (early attempts, many in the wrong spot, poor soil and kikuyu-infested garden beds) and where to from here.
Claire drew plans and wrote detailed notes about what to do where. I had a five-page plan of attack, tailored for the sun, soil and slope of my yard, and what I wanted from it, plus a few more pages on how to get “up and growing”.
The past 12 months have been about implementation.
My husband and I spent three full weekends sheet mulching the front and back yards. I lost count of how many wheelbarrows full of soil and mulch we shifted around. There was so much that we couldn’t get up our driveway until we’d done it. It was exhausting, and some of our early backyard garden consultation customers said the same thing – which led to Green Connect launching garden blitzes. We send in a team to do all the hard stuff like sheet mulching, weeding, pruning and mulching.
We will have been in our new house for two years in January and it is everything I hoped it would be and more.
The front yard is filled with flowers, herbs, peas, rocket, citrus, fig, jaboticaba (look it up – they’re amazing) and a native plum tree.
Just sitting at the front door is a joy, and in those crazy times when we were at home 24/7, I took to eating my lunch out there in the sun so I could watch the bees contentedly buzzing around collecting nectar and pollen from the purple basil, lavender and calendula.
In the back, we have fruit and vegetables, and I’m eagerly awaiting Green Connect’s next crop rotation workshop so I can learn more about what order to plant things in for best results. The chickens are happy and healthy and productive. The bees are even more so – our pantry is quickly filling up with honey this spring, and I know what all our friends and family will be getting as Christmas presents!
Hardly a day goes by that the kids, Nico and I aren’t in the garden watering, planting, picking and eating. And no mowing! Absolutely none. The kids can name almost every plant, take great joy choosing what seeds to plant next, and even greater joy tasting the end results.
They pick peas straight off the plant to see who can get the most prolific pods, giggle as they eat pansies and other edible flowers, collect eggs from the chicken coop with big smiles, and say hello and thank you to the bees they see. I feel like we have managed to create this little slice of heaven in a suburban backyard. Just enough to keep us interested, engaged and tasting great food straight from the garden. Not so much that it feels like a burden.
Liam and the Good Gardens team at Green Connect have been busy, even through lockdown, designing, building, transforming and maintaining gardens around Wollongong. We hope it’s a service that brings you as much joy from your backyard as we have had. Happy growing!
Contact: www.green-connect.com.au, enquiries@green-connect.com.au, 02 4243 1537