The garden as a mirror, playground, and teacher
A reflection on having my hands in the soil, and commentary on the power of gardening.
Shockingly, I had never thought too deeply about where my food was coming from in my 3 years studying nutrition. Naturally, science was the focus, dissecting the entirety of meals and culture down to its constituents (which often fell short of reality).
One thing I did take with me was that nutrient density declines from the moment a food is picked, meaning that the nutrition profile of supermarket apples, waxed and temperature controlled, would be starkly different from that of apples picked straight from the tree. While I didn’t have access to freshly harvested foods, journeying to the organic market every Sunday in the city was a start.
In restaurants, I wondered where ingredients were sourced, how they were grown, and whether farmers were acknowledged as a part of the story… or were just providers. When both Jordan and I noticed a difference between the quality of supermarket and farmers’ market produce, we learned how little people seemed to care– especially in the health and fitness industry. Body composition and performance were of greater importance, so food was often seen as a means to an end.
In the midst of shifting my priorities with health, catalysed by yoga training, the uncoupling of the food we eat and the means of its growth was just adding to me reforming my values.
It was in a research frenzy of beginner gardening that I rediscovered permaculture. I had the privilege to study permaculture in high school Geography, which included a camp at Crystal Waters Eco-Village to learn from permaculture educator and speaker Morag Gamble. I was 16 at the time, with priorities on my hair, where my clothes were from, and boys.
I didn’t feel confident, or welcome, to share my interest in the outdoors and nature despite growing up with countless camping holidays and quietly enjoying my time out of the city. Most of my cohort were less than enthusiastic about walking the few kilometers from our campsite to Morag’s lot, and even less so when we had to do maintenance on her worm farm.
Thrust 40 urban private-school teenagers outside in the rain and you will weep for the future.
A few years later, with our farm acquired and having uprooted our lives from the city, I envisioned my country garden to emulate Morag’s food forest of opulence and coherence– and set to work early in the morning on landscaping the patch of lawn in front of our balcony. South of the house and in the full melting Queensland sun, I saw the grass lawn as superfluous and wanted instead to grow beans, tomato, eggplant and salad greens. If I couldn’t eat it, I didn’t want it! Selfish of me, really.
That was a time of forceful productivity and determination, and was reflected in the success and coherence of my first attempt gardening on a larger scale.
With gusto we followed the method we used in my first suburban garden, aerating the soil, laying down newspaper and cardboard, and topping it with compost and mulch. This no-dig garden technique is a fantastic way to add to the organic matter of the land, as the layers slowly decompose and create almost ready-made compost. We ordered seeds online (as I considered myself a purist), planted them into the new beds, and gave it water– bing bang boom.
Stakes were driven into the ground for the tomatoes I knew were to come, and diagrams were drawn in my sketchbook to map out the design of my work. I watered the garden regularly, pulled out the beginnings of weeds that were popping up in the soil, and waited. And waited.
What I grew most successfully that first time around was grass.
While I had a few straggling zucchini seedlings rising and some bean tendrils wrapping around the bottom of my trellis, grass bloomed more than anything. It seemed the seed bank on the rural land was far greater than what I had experienced in the city. I plucked determinedly, weeding every few days so I could maintain my neat rows of sowed seeds and pretty rectangular boxes.
As summer mellowed into spring, I persisted with my garden quandaries for a few more months, weeding continuously, using sheer will to encourage my seeds to grow.
I resisted spending time in the garden. It began to feel less like a solace and more like a battlefield. I wilted, like my stringy bean seedlings in the scorching summer sun, disheartened and hurt. I wasn’t listening to the land, I was trying to control it. The garden was my mirror– it showed me how desperate I was to make the new life on the farm work. Because I felt like it had to, otherwise nothing would. It showed me how narrow my perspective was.
“And it sort of moves with you. It changes with you. You think you’re growing it, and it’s growing you.” – Caroline, quoted by Alice Vincent in Why Women Grow.
Defeated, I let it be for some time. I let the continual rain of the hinterland nurture its soil, and let the grass grow long. I pivoted my attention to my potted garden, where I felt most safe, growing seedlings in my rickety greenhouse to then plant in the pots and containers around the house.
Jordan cleverly built a raised bed around one of the palm tree stumps, reinforced with gathered rocks and wooden sleepers foraged on the farm. He gave me two feet deep of redemption. I planted capsicum and sage seeds, tomato and eggplant, finding such satisfaction in transforming something that once damaged my home, to something that supports it.
But every so often I would come out to the no-dig garden to find surviving rocket ready to be picked, or a few cherry tomatoes ripe for a salad, thanking the garden for what it gave me.
I let most of my efforts breathe (out of defeat), but I also tried to yield. As Alice Vincent of Why Women Grow so eloquently put– “I used to talk at the garden, now I listen.”
There was growth, whether I wanted it in that way or not. This was my first insight into how the natural, wild disorder of life on the land brings beauty and harmony into the world. When I walked through the wooded areas of the property, I witnessed the fertility and vibrancy of the forest floor. I swam in the gushing waterfalls of the Jinibara hills, observing the flow of its crystalline water be in movement and ease. Why couldn’t my garden, and my life, be a space for that too?
We built more beds, allowing the weeds to tumble and grow in easeful competition with the sprawling pumpkin vines. It’s not pretty, but it doesn’t have to be. Now, if I feel an inclination, I do a spot of weeding. Or, I let it grow. If the soil feels dry, I layer more mulch. If the seedlings look undersized, I add more compost. I listen.
I leave sections to rewild, returning in a few weeks to find little gifts amongst the grass– a few eggplants, or a burst of lavendar blooms. It’s less about what I can take, but more about what I can witness come through.
The garden evolves, metamorphoses, and transforms with me. It teaches me to yield expectations and to relinquish control. As I give the garden more of my time, I feel my shoulders drop. Excitement for meals swells as I get to eat more off the land– and I marvel at the abundance and gifts that the earth holds with bone-deep gratitude.