Coming Home – To The Garden

Let it be known that I would like Deborah Conway’s song ‘Today I am a Daisy’ played at my birthday, funeral, Sunday brunch. Play it often, play it loud and make sure you sing along! And always have daisies in the garden.

I became a gardener in our previous home. I had planted things in share houses, carried a couple of potted plants around with me, began to experiment a bit in our home in Canberra. It wasn’t until we came home to Bendigo and I was a fulltime stay at home mum that I really indulged the urge to get my hands dirty. My family are still stunned at the reality of me as a gardener. Growing up the garden was the last place you would find me. I was playing sport, horse riding, studying, or, more realistically, reading a book. I was the last person you could expect to get my hands dirty or help out with the yard. But, as the wise characters of the 1985 movie Top Secret share, ‘people change, hairstyles change.” 

I joined the Diggers Club (well worth doing for anyone with an interest in growing an edible garden), set up a compost heap and began creating my own flourishing garden. Our little backyard in town turned out to be perfect for it. The olive trees doubled in size each year and began producing kilos of fruit. The lime and lemon trees gifted us baskets full of citrus every season and the raspberry canes were so prolific I will never be able to go back to rationing the expensive precious things from a supermarket bought container. I grew tomatoes and peas and beans and three-coloured corn and the kids ate carrots straight from the soil and rinsed under the garden tap. One year a rogue pumpkin took root and grew out of control over the entire backyard. I had to put on long boots to climb through it to get to the clothes line and the toddler at the time disappeared under leaves bigger than dinner plates. We set up storage under the house where dozens of pumpkins sat through winter until we couldn’t face another soup or pancake or risotto that was orange. It was just like I had dreamed it would be. 

And then, because surely you can’t have too much of a good thing, we moved to our forever home. The one with ‘the garden’. 

When we moved to Ardley my bible was Rhonda Hetzel’s Down to Earth blog and the book she wrote as a result. I understood exactly what she meant when she spoke of being tired and just wanting to go home and grow things. I was already halfway there and, with so much more space in which to grow where I was planted (another of her favourite sayings), I felt ready to dive into some sustainable living. I am drawn to gardening for many reasons. 

Gardeners are sane, hopeful humans who try again and again and again, tweaking something here, learning from mistakes, building on their knowledge of what works and what doesn’t work. You know who they are. They have a scratch on the back of their hand, dirt under their nails and probably a sneaky cutting in their pocket snapped from a plant hanging over the fence of the house they’ve just walked by. 

Here at Ardley we have chooks, an orchard, citrus and olive trees. Vegetables growing everywhere. Space to grow everything I dreamed we could grow. Perfect, you might think, and you would be correct. Everything I could possibly want is right here. The fruit trees, the citrus, the olives. Vegetable gardens and a chook shed and purpose built compost piles. In the years since I have come to know our land well. I know it’s foibles. We are on a hill where our garden receives the worst of the wind which rushes up towards our house and dries everything in its path. The entire property receives the full heat of the summer sun and we can’t keep enough water up to them for them to have any chance of gaining drops of it through the roots before it seeps away through the stones. We have soil that is perfect for gold but repels water. Seriously, who gardens in soil that is hydrophobic? Me! I know that it is made of dust and rock and not a lot else to bind it and there will never be enough compost to nourish it. Not that that stops me, I am a hopeful person! I know that even though citrus roots grow shallowly it is still impossible to establish a lime tree in this ground but one will grow in a pot if you hide it in the corner near a fence. The cherries thrive (yay!) and so do the stone fruit but the apple and pear trees are bewildered by the state of the soil.

Do you know what does grow well here? Daisies! Oh, hallelujah! Not just daisies but roses and lavender and those are the flowers that bring me joy. 

Except for the roses. They stubbornly chose to ignore the weather and the one standard rose I had planted in memory of my Pop flourished. The enormous red blooms drenched us in sweet scents as we passed it by and no matter how many armfuls of the buds I cut for vases in the house they were replaced by dozens more. I was hooked (and not just by the thorns…!). 

I took cuttings from my nan and every single one grew roots and settled in the garden. I ordered some red ones from Diggers Club but when they flowered they were closer to pink. I ripped them up and shoved them in other parts of the garden where they promptly settled in and bloomed defiantly. Now, when I looked at the garden, all I could see was possible sites for future rose bushes. I started browsing the rose display at our local nursery. Rodilesa, if you get the chance to pop in when you’re in town, is a brilliant garden shop. They also know the conditions I am confronted by when I garden in this suburb and their advice is informed and helpful. Walking through looking for blood red roses I found… Dolly Parton roses.

I feel a great alliance to Dolly Parton. Her music is brilliant and should always be played at high volume and you should ALWAYS sing along. Loudly. She is a strong, impertinent, courageous woman and her messages stand the test of time.

And so I bought four Dolly Parton red roses. They’ve been in my front garden for two years now. I can see them from the window above my writing desk. In winter I keep a protective eye on them, in summer I revel in the embarrassment of riches, dozens of pretty red flowers that greet anyone who ventures to our front door. Thanks Dolly.

Dad averts his eyes from my thorny winter wonderland but does concede that we need to garden according to the demands of our land. That’s as close as we will get to ‘you were right’ on this one and I will take it as read. In the meanwhile, 

Find an afternoon when you can clear at least half an hour. Even now when then spring growth is showing in swollen buds but very little greenery yet. Take a cup of tea, a pot if you have one, and a good book and a rug for your knees. Move your chair close to a leafless, wintering rose that has lavender blooming near it’s feet and the sun is warming that divine oil. Sit there, read if you want, sip the tea slowly. If you can, stay a bit longer. Trust me, it’s worth it. By the time you stretch your legs, close the book and fold the rug you will have breathed deeply and most likely come up with all sorts of creative ideas you will be busting to make/cook/plant. 

You’ll never regret time in the garden. One of nature’s gifts to you. Enjoy it.