Living sustainably on a suburban block | Urban Farming | Gardening Australia

Hannah visits a family who are living their dream - dedicating their lives and their land to cultivate almost everything they need. Rather than self-reliance, they call it community-reliance.

1:21 Meg and Patrick have been working on the plot for 10 years, and when they started, there was only one mature oak tree on the compacted, denuded, gently sloping block. They bought a kit home and built structures on the property to supplement their income and house volunteers. “We have three have tiny houses on the plot and a sauna but have used the space really well.” said Meg.

The abundant garden features bio-intensive annual beds, food forests, a glass house for propagation and drying produce, a large deck for frost sensitive plants, chooks, ducks, bee hives, and crops growing on every vertical surface. Meg explains “It’s very full but there is still more space for food. If things don’t produce, they get the chop!”

2:23 Of course, they kept the original oak tree and make acorn-meal for pancakes, but they have added an astounding 150 fruit and nut trees. Meg says “having this many fruit trees on a normal sized block keeps them small. We prune to increase yield. They do compete for nutrients, but they are all productive”. Many are on dwarf rootstock to keep them small. “It’s a food forest so we want that closeness to take advantage of the space. But I am embarrassed with how much land we have.” Even the nature strip is intensively – indigenous plantings mixed with fruit trees.

Annual gardens are bio-intensive, small plots of ten rows in swales, channels with sloping sides to capture rainwater. They have access to town water but utilise every structure to capture water onsite. “Most of the year we use our own water for the garden.” The soil is super-productive, with new beds prepared by planting comfrey for two seasons, chopping and dropping, and then aerated with a Broad fork. They continually charge the soil using compost, created from scraps collected from a local café and manure.

The short growing season is a challenge in a cool climate, so the glasshouse is used to raise seedlings and extend the growing season. It also includes a drying rack for fruit and herb drying. Meg estimates that she spends 3-4 hrs a day on preserving food. “Come Autumn we become anti-social as we have so much to preserve. 2:56 My job is to fill the cellar. Drying, stewing, fermenting, brewing! It’s not just for us. I trade this for other produce in the local community and we have volunteers working on our land. We haven’t been to the supermarket for ten years!” Their cellar is full of preserved food. They are also a zero waste family.

Hannah says that Meg and Patrick are living their ethics. This plot of land is beautifully managed while the folks that live here are highly engaged in the world. Meg and Patrick are living differently – creating new systems around food and community sufficiency.



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