• The inspiration
This guest blog by Gauri Maini describes her gardening journey at her home in Sydney’s north. There are useful links to some local Council incentives and policies to conserve water, increase vegetation.
I fell in love with this home the moment we walked in the door in 2003. I remember sitting on the floor in this very large room with floor to ceiling glass looking out into the gum trees and thinking, this is where I want my kids to grow up.
16 years on, my kids are all grown up, I have moved on from a big corporate job into freelance work and the garden seems to beckon.
• The original courtyard
The years took its toll on the garden, in the places we could not see when we were raising kids, cooking dinner, cleaning up, washing. And when all that was done, I started noticing the pavers going topsy turvy, giving way to roots and weeds.
There was just the aesthetics of course. And then with work occupying me much less, I was noticing things I had not before... my own footprint, the impact of my consumption on the land, our food waste.
And somehow, I landed in a composting workshop at Kimbriki.
This workshop changed my perspective on a lot of things. There are probably many reasons and early influencers that took me towards what has now become a six month journey into rebuilding our garden. That story is for another time.
• “I take care of everywhere I go”
It started with a simple task of removing the fishbone fern and ficus on our 400 sqm sloping backyard, rich with natural sandstone and gorgeous native trees and ferns. We slowly made our way across the yard and discovered carefully laid out terraces and even a pond that we never knew existed!!
• I discovered a pond underneath fishbone plants
The green from the ferns got replaced by the brown of the soil. I started creating piles of leaves in corners and digging it into the soil. I started following a lot of gardeners, landscapers and botanists. I signed up for some garden advice through the Ku-ring-gai Council’s Greenstyle program, discovered the Council’s Water Smart Rebate offered for building rain gardens and replacing traditional impermeable surfaces with permeable materials.
• Impermeable before . .
• Permeable after . . .
I learnt that you build a garden for what it can look like in two, three years. That tube stock is harder to establish and yet can become healthier over a year or so than a larger plant. I discovered that different nurseries had tube stock plant of different health!
I learnt about root bound plants, deep watering, enriching the soil and composting. So, about 400 tube stock later, I find myself rushing into the garden every morning to inspect what our resident wallaby and her joey ate, what did the turkeys discover and uproot and how are my plants doing.
I fell in love with native grasses and I think I even talk to trowel because I cannot find where I left it. This is now a forever journey.
Gauri Maini, December 2019