"It's an appetising jungle" The Age Newspaper Article -circa 1997
Art/Food/Horticulture.
From 1984- 2000, alongside my art practice of Screenprinted Cards and Prints, Music and Animation, I worked as a gardener, home nursery and garden design business. After completing a Permaculture Design Course I gave my gardening business the name of "Simply Edible Gardens". I sold plants and drew up garden designs on Amiga and Atari home computers with a dot matrix printer.
I also produced a little booklet of my take on the most useful organic gardening and permaculture tips for suburban gardens. The cover was printed with the newer safe inks and tiny device, Print Gocco "Riso" screen printer and the pages traditional actual cut and paste, basic dot matrix printed text and photocopy services.
You can peruse or download this booklet now as digitised e-book pdf file at the end of this paragraph.
I feel the booklet still has some relevance but comes with no guarantee of accuracy, originality or special value!
Since 2000 our growing family moved to outer Bendigo, adjusting to the very much different climate and landscape, fitting in busier family and work lives has made many compromises and changes, but growing plants for wider revegetation and wildlife concerns as well as many uses including health and food has been a continuing quest and source of satisfaction and connection.
Simply Edible Gardens Organic Gardening , Permaculture Design, Driveway Nursery of Edible Plants, West Heidelberg 1990- 2000
Frost Sensitive Tamarillo Fruit Tree near brick wall for protection- never really got into eating these much, but a no fuss plant and very pretty fruit.!
Your humble carrot in flower- creates literally hundreds if not thousands of seeds and is a good attractant for useful garden insect and natural pest control.
Multi-headed "Sugarloaf" Cabbage, quicker and hardier than its bigger rounder relative and growing up through a dormant Fruit Tree/living trellis.
This pumpkin happily grew up through an apple tree and then provided shade over the chook house run. It was great to see a fruit tree with apples and pumpkins fruiting in it.
A hard working little bantam chook wandering into the garden- great at certain times..but for example not straight after planting out new seedlings!
Part of a landscape design and implementation for a local Kindergarten "Kindergarten" edible, multi sensory fragrance and textures.
A very cheap and living edge, mass herbs, and flowers along a garden edge crowding out weeds( with a little help every now and then ) low maintenance, cheap, effective and attractive .
Lawn Replacement, was started about the week we moved into this place. Local tree Mulch from the council , newspaper killed off the grass and started composting process to feed the new mass planting of useful and edible plants.
Possibly only a few months later the lawn has completely disappeared. Mass plantings with a nice little path winding through it for access, harvesting and maintenance,
The edible garden then spread to put some more nature into the "nature strip" A great little crop of Sweet Corn that neighbors kids also enjoyed picking.
There was a makeshift little plant propagation and cold frame at the back of the house and on open days this spare piece of driveway became a little nursery- other stock produced was incorporated in various garden designs for other people and places.