HOBART BOTANIC GARDENS... HOME OF PETE'S PATCH

I think I watched every episode of Gardening Australia while Peter Cundall was on it and I came to really like that pom enough to almost accept his advice. What I like most about him still is his determination to stop woodchipping Tasmania's old growth forests and to stand up and be arrested, at 82, for the cause. He also single-handedly brought organics into the homes of every Australian TV gardener, making purchasers of chemicals quiver in their boots, with his outspoken criticism of chemical agriculture and horticulture.

Yesterday I visited the Royal Tasmanian Botanic Gardens, where Pete's Patch from Scratch began. Cleverly, placing this in a botanic gardens gives it credibility somehow and also ensures that it continues to inspire people long after Peter has left Gardening Australia and hopefully long after Gardening Australia has finished too. I knew I was approaching "his" vegetable garden because the use of vegetables as garden features seemed to have leaked out and spread into surrounding garden areas, as good ideas are wont to do. In this photo, left, of the conservatory garden, a narrow, stone wall raised bed is filled with silver beet (foreground) and each corner of the square is punctuated with a teepee of scarlet runner beans in their full flowering glory. Herbs and more vegetables form 90% of this entire beautiful garden, including the centrepieces of the 4 lawns filled with sweetcorn and rainbow chard (right).

The vegetable garden was of course lovely but what I loved most was the ecology of it all.... like I am always going on about.... surround your vegetables and fruit with herbs and flowers and native plants and you will gain on every level.... few pests, more variety to pick, whether food or flowers, and the sheer joy of seeing such abundance flourish so effortlessly as a result. And the earth will gain too, in too many ways to go into again here. There were bees and butterflies and birds and all things wise and wonderful in this beautiful border of herbs and perennials which formed the backdrop of the vegetable garden.

 

At the very back you can just see a corner of a massive, old, brick wall which provides a much needed warmer microclimate for some of the fruit trees which are thriving here in less than ordinarily ideal conditions. There are citrus and tamarillos and passionfruit to name a few.

Scarlet runner beans grow to enormous heights here, as you can see in this photo and beans in general seem to produce incredible crops right through summer.

In the glass house were some tropical herbs like lemongrass.

All in all it was a wonderful, lush, productive garden full to overflowing with fruit and vegetables, all grown without chemicals of any sort.

"I guess that's your bloomin' lot".... as Peter would say .... "but you'll be absolutely blown away by the rest of the Botanic Garden that I will write about soon."

I will upload some more photos here soon. In the meantime, you can read about this beautiful garden here.

SALAMANCA AND BEYOND

 

Every day brings a new adventure, here in Hobart, Tasmania. On Saturday I went to the Salamanca market and I could not believe my eyes; this was probably the biggest market I have ever been to! Considering Hobart is a city of only 150,000 that is quite a feat. It is beautifully set between lawns on one side, the cafes and interesting shops of Salamanaca Place on the other and a backdrop of mountains. Erica and I arrived soon after 9am and wandered along, buying lots of excellent, local organic vegetables and breads.

The food stalls included a group of Asian growers with everything one could want for some Thai, Vietnamese or Chinese cooking. The breads were quite different from Adelaide artisan breads. In particular, the organic, sour dough rye loaf I bought has a deliciously soft and chewy crust instead of being as hard as Paolo's or The Rustica I often buy in the central market in Adelaide.

Most of the stalls are not selling food, but crafts, clothes and jewelry.

"Oh" I hear you say, "One of those tacky, glitzy, awful markets."

"No! Most definitely not!" I answer.

People here are obviously very talented in their crafts because I could have bought enough beautiful, interesting, reasonably priced things to fill a house... which I may well need to do soon! There are a lot of beautiful woods in Tasmania and people do such creative and interesting things with them. The market was very busy and I was not able to get many clear shots of the stalls but I will go earlier next Saturday and take more time wandering and photographing.

I did, however, find a new Tasmanian seed company, Southern Harvest, based right here, on 5 acres on the edge of Hobart.They offer seed for kitchen, cottage and native gardens. I talked to Claire who owns the business with her husband. They have plans to produce more and more seed themselves but still are relying on some seed from the mainland to supplement their own. I asked Claire if she knew of a local seedsavers group and she said lots of people ask her that but as yet there doesn't seem to be one, although there is mention of one on the Seedsavers Network site but no action has occurred since 2008.

Erica and I had a lovely time talking with Helen Cushing and her daughter Pippa at one of the many cafes that line Salamanca Place. Helen writes for Tasmanian Life and had just returned from a visit to rosarian and octagenerian Susan Irvine and has written about her fabulous garden and life dedicated to Alister Clark roses. Helen also told us of a new bookshop which sells only books by Tasmanian authors and I think this deserves a visit soon.

All too soon it was time to leave as Erica had to get back and pack for her family's trip to Sydney, while I stay at her house and look after things there. Erica did not see the gleam in my eye when she mentioned on the way home that the jasmine is overgrowing the scarlet runner beans and needs pruning back. You see, Jasmine and I do not get on. I am passionate about plants; I love to sow their seeds, watch them come to life and be a part of their lives but ..... I draw the line at Jasmine and its disgusting aroma which makes me cough and sneeze. Touching the leaves makes my skin itch and tingle and its invasive habit is so obnoxious I cannot understand why people grow it on purpose!

So, dressed for gardening, I stood at the gate waving goodbye to the family on Sunday, secateurs in my pocket at the ready! If I'd had my way, that Jasmine would have been cut off at the ground but I tried to be calm..... after all, this was not my garden! It tried to get the better of me by being securely attached to the beans but secateurs are a wonderful tool and those nasty strands were soon severed with glee. An hour later, after hacking and pulling and talking unkindly to it, I had it subdued..... and celebrated with a cup of coffee and a couple of the beans that had been overgrown by the jasmine.

The rest of Erica's vegetable garden has a beautiful view..... no wonder it all looks so happy!

Greetings from Michel and Jude – Byron Bay Seedsavers

News from Michel and Jude, the people behind the 24 year old Seed Savers’ Network based in Byron Bay, Australia. We are now on a working sabbatical in Malaysia, after two months in Rajasthan, India, and some weeks on a speaking tour in Japan. 

Love food gardens? See our perceptions of food plant diversity and food issues, as short pieces, pictures and film clips at www.seedsavers.net We continue to take footage for a third documentary, after the success of “Our Seeds”(have you seen the trailer on our website?). A second, “Our Roots”, was shot in Vanuatu for French CIRAD, is now in post-production and due out in March this year.

The Seed Savers Foundation is a registered charity that fosters fruit and vegetable seed exchanges in twenty countries. It manages eighty local seed networks around Australia - see Google map at www.seedsaver.net.

We would be tickled pink to receive emails from Seed Savers' friends, fans and supporters and be part of your dreams and realisations. This month you will receive news from wherever we travel, now in the equatorial forests of the Cameron Highlands Malaysia, the home of a cornucopia of fruits and, importantly, the Orang Asli, the original forest people. The highlands are the vegetable basket for Singapore and lowland Malaysia, even Japan.

All the best for 2010.

WONDERFUL, WILD TASMANIA

I have sat here with my fingers hovering over the keys for several minutes, wondering where to start describing what I have seen and experienced in the first few days of my stay in Hobart, Tasmania...... This photo is of Erica and I on a walk around the lake at Mt. Field in the cold drizzle, the mist blowing in and out of the valley and down the mountain again, totally engrossed in the beauty of the mosses and lichens, the pencil pines and pandanus, and the Tasmanian mountain pepper leaf bushes in their natural habitat. Earlier we were in a deep, damp valley filled with thousands of tree ferns under a thin canopy of tall trees reaching to the sky. Platypus and trout live in the crystal clear streams while tiny wrens and other birds fill the air with song.

This is the paradise I had almost forgotten existed, where people become insignificant and humbled by the wonder of nature.... but you'd better check your feet for leeches when you take your shoes off! And the Kurrajongs greet you in the carpark!

While it is 40C in Adelaide, try and think of a good reason why you are not here too!

 

 

Another day we drove up the Huon Valley, stopping here and there to buy cherries and nectarines and apricots from roadside stalls. But life is not all fun here, as logging of old-growth forests is still going on and trucks laden with the trunks of massive trees thunder down the main street of Huonville.

We were intrigued by this sign, also in Huonville .... Follow path to the book shop.... so we did and found a magical little green garden room filled to overflowing with second hand books. It was a challenge to remove any book from a pile lest the whole lot cascade to the floor! Somehow all 4 of us came out laden and excited with what we had found. My favourite is called "A Wild Herb Soup... The life of a French countrywoman" written originally in French by Emilie Carles who lived in alpine south eastern France in the early 1900's. My version is in tiny English print.

I am so lucky to be staying with my very good friend Erica, her husband Brian and delightful daughters Kristy and Emma. Two more welcoming and friendly teenage girls you could not meet. Emma was not with us the day we found the bookshop, but below is a photo of her magnificent gingerbread house creation. The other girl in the doorway of the bookshop is Jean, a lovely friend of Kristy's.

Emma ...

This little weatherboard house on 1 acre, with a creek and fertile soil, could be my next home!

Beautiful location.... at Cygnet, south of Hobart.

 

 

 

 

Seeing the Tasmanian mountain pepper (Tasmannia lanceolata) growing in the wild was so exciting. It is one of my favourite native herbs and it takes a lot of care to grow it in Adelaide. In this wild, cold and windy environment its pungency fills the air as you brush past it.

 

See more photos here.