Hannah takes Costa around her home garden, explaining how she grows on such a steep slope and how things have developed since his last visit. Subscribe http://ab.co/GA-subscribe
We’ve watched Hannah’s garden develop since joining the Gardening Australia team in 2019 and teach us all her handy tricks and tips along the way! Costa has come for a visit to see just how much has changed in the last few years and how 10 years of work is coming into fruition.
Hannah and her partner Anton moved here in 2013 starting with a much smaller property. A few years later they purchased a neighbouring block that provided a driveway for much better access and a whole lot more space for plants. Now large structural trees are well established and there’s a huge mix of edible fruit and nut trees with an understorey of native and herbaceous plants that are consistently producing. It’s modelled on the idea of a food forest, mimicking the layers of a natural ecosystem where each plant fills a niche.
“It feels like it’s finally starting to turn the corner, it’s been a lot of years of a lot of hard work, and now things are starting to get their roots down.”
Slope management:
The site is a steep slope, up to thirty degrees in some parts! Hannah says working on a slope means “everything is harder, it will take longer, and it is more expensive but it’s also a fantastic opportunity to get creative.”
The shape of the landscape guided the whole layout. Terraces were a first step to managing water and nutrient runoff. Each terrace was limited to a certain size and shape in order to maintain soil stability. This meant structures like the goat and chicken houses had to take up the larger zones.
Heat-treated pallets were embedded in the slope to help stabilise soil and create planting pockets. Only remnants of these are visible as they are being composted in situ and now plant roots are holding the slope in place.
Another trick was to use swales. “A swale traditionally is just a ditch on contour, but we made it slightly off contour just because in our long, wet winters we need to make sure we can safely guide water away from particular areas” such as vegetable beds that would suffer from inundation.
An exposed site also means the garden is battered by strong winds. Growing windbreaks has been a key solution, such as a hedge of Dodonaea viscosa.
Production methods:
Tasmania’s cool climate has its own specific challenges. Hobart is surprisingly dry, which is another reason terraces were necessary to improve rain infiltration for so many edible plants. They also have water tanks on site and a grey water irrigation system for the most vulnerable plants. A cold frame also comes in handy to “make sure things ripen or can hang around a bit longer” with such short summers.
Chickens, goats and ducks “provide a huge amount of nutrients back for our food system.” Hannah strategically funnels all their manure into the right place, mostly composted in nearby bays, where it can break down over six months or so into perfect compost to make more food for the human and animal members of the family!
Will the garden ever be ‘finished’?
Hannah sees a lot of jobs still to be done but “for me it’s important to remember that the reason I garden is to nourish myself, but to nourish others as well in my community and beyond. And in that framework, it’s happening, and I think we’ve got to really sit in that and just enjoy that and go, yes!”
It’s easy to get impatient, especially when you only see highlight snapshots of other people’s gardens, but it’s important to step back, celebrate your space and all that you’ve done so far. “As I grow and evolve so does my garden… One side of that frustrates me but the other side of it’s like, oh, how wonderful that we keep changing and evolving. And I’ve had to develop a level of acceptance around that.”
Featured Plants:
STICKY HOP-BUSH – Dodonaea viscosa
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