At this time of the year, when the lawn’s stopped growing (finally!) and the mornings are white with frost, I feel like going into a state of semi-dormancy as well. In some ways I envy gardeners in the northern hemisphere whose backyards are blanketed in snow for most of winter leaving little option but to take the entire season off. Here, of course, it’s not quite as drastic. We can brave the cold, and in reality, there is still a long list of jobs that could be done.

My advice is to put the list in the top drawer, and look at it only occasionally. You might like to get stuck into a few warming tasks, like hard landscaping and digging compost into your vegie patch ahead of spring, but there’s an opportunity over the next month or two to spend some time in quiet reflection and in my view, it’s too good to miss.

Few of us spend enough time reflecting. For the perpetually busy, reflection is a complete no-go zone, but even for those of us who’ve sought to carve out time for such pursuits, reflection can be difficult to accommodate. In my experience though, it’s a priceless discipline. Each winter, whenever the opportunity arises, I’ll make time to either sit and do nothing but think, or more likely, evaluate the seasons just passed in my garden and make plans for the warmer months (and sometimes years) ahead.

Often a book or two gets pulled off my shelf. I’m one of these silly people who always has a pile of half read books on the go, so I prefer to get stuck into them, but it’s amazing how often I return to my old favourites. They’ve become a bit like trusted companions, full of hard won wisdom and sound advice, and when I need it, an inspirational passage or two to get my gardening juices flowing again.

Monty Don’s The Organic Gardener (sold in the UK and US as The Complete Gardener, a better title in my opinion) is probably the most referred-to book in my library. Don is a long-time gardening columnist and the much loved host of the BBC’s Gardeners’ World program, the equivalent of our Gardening Australia. He writes beautifully, but is, first and foremost, a compulsive domestic gardener.

In 1991 Monty and wife Sarah retreated to a tumble down Tudor house set amid a two acre field in Herefordshire. The couple’s jewellery business, which once boasted Princess Diana among a stellar client list, had gone spectacularly bust, and Don was severely depressed. Gardening became a kind of redemption. In two decades, with countless hours of sweat and labour, the couple transformed a derelict, flood prone field into one of Britain’s most recognisable gardens.

In The Organic Gardener, Don offers a comprehensive overview of his gardening philosophies, and outlines the various techniques he uses for growing a wide array of edible and ornamental plants. The book makes a compelling case for organic growing. Yet Don’s techniques are solidly traditional. In the book you’ll learn how to tie-in raspberry canes, and make your own seed raising mix. You’ll find advice on planting hedges, and rotation plans for the vegie patch. Don covers a heap of ground in The Organic Gardener, and the words are beautifully illustrated by superb photography. It’s a brilliant book.

The second most cherished book in my collection is Dr Louis Glowinski’s The Complete Book of Fruit Growing in Australia. Dr Glowinski is a Melbourne GP, who doubles as a passionate edible gardener and is a member of the International Rare Fruit Council. As such, his book is soundly based on a combination of personal experience, scientific enquiry, and a healthy dose of historical fact.

Unlike Monty Don’s book, illustrations are scant in The Complete Book of Fruit Growing in Australia, but the text is wonderfully composed, offering comprehensive advice on all aspects of fruit growing culture, and for a very wide range of temperate and subtropical varieties. Dr Glowinski covers everything from A to Z, apples to Zizyphus (jujubes). And he’s never short of a joke. After all, he says, “growing fruit is a pleasure, not a duty”.

So the next time someone criticises you for sitting next to the heater, when there’s work to be done outside, my advice is to do this: Tell them that Justin, the bloke who writes about gardening for The Chronicle and (hopefully!) knows what he’s talking about, is probably doing the same thing at this very minute. Make the most of winter, and its opportunities for reflection.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 25th June 2011.

The events come thick and fast at this time of the year. Easter, Anzac Day, and Earth Day last weekend, Gardenfest and Autumnfest this weekend (see Garden Cuttings for more info), and the Hampton Food and Arts Festival in a couple of weeks’ time. One event that’s likely to fly under the radar, but deserves more attention is the inaugural National Permaculture Day, tomorrow, May 1.

Despite being described by veteran environmentalist David Suzuki as “the most important activity that any group is doing on the planet”, Permaculture has yet to gain any real traction in our part of the world. As far as I’m aware, there are no local events being held tomorrow, which is a shame, and though there are a handful of dedicated permaculture gardens hidden around the place, none are throwing open their gates to the public. I wonder why this is the case. Is it because of Toowoomba’s conservatism, where anything and anyone bearing a green tinge generally gets treated with suspicion? Or is it simply that permaculture is a difficult concept to understand?

Conservative our area might be, but in my experience the latter reason is true: most local gardeners have heard of permaculture, but few actually understand what the concept is about. Personally, I find permaculture to be brilliantly conceived, even revolutionary, but it is a very difficult concept to penetrate for the average home gardener with no experience in design or ecology. And while I don’t really consider myself a permaculturalist (and certainly don’t qualify as a permaculture designer), I would like to spend this Saturday and next introducing the permaculture concept and outlining ways we might be able to apply it in our gardens.

As with all concepts, it’s worth starting with a definition. The Oxford English Dictionary defines permaculture as “the development or maintenance of an ecosystem intended to be self-sustaining and to satisfy the living requirements of its inhabitants, esp. by the use of renewable resources”. That hardly pins the concept to the mat, so let’s expand a bit with some history.

The term Permaculture” is a portmanteau of permanent culture, and permanent agriculture. The concept originated in the mid 1970′s when a young ecology student, David Holmgren, and his lecturer at the University of Tasmania, Bill Mollison, published an article in Tasmania’s Organic Farmer and Gardener Magazine. This article was soon followed by an interview on ABC radio, and in 1978, Holmgren and Mollison’s seminal book on the concept, Permaculture One: A perennial Agriculture for Human Settlements.

Sadly, the two visionaries have since gone their separate ways. Mollison, who still lives in Tassie, has focussed on education, believing that permaculture could spread exponentially by teaching students, who would in turn teach others, and so on. He taught the first Permaculture Design Course (known as PDC’s by Permies) at Stanley in Tasmania, in 1979, and thousands of PDC’s have been taught around the world in the years since.

David Holmgren took a different approach. With permaculture gaining widespread publicity, he retreated to a smallholding in Victoria to quietly test his ideas. In 2002, he re-emerged with Permaculture – Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability a landmark book that reinterpreted permaculture’s fundamental design principles as a creative adaptation to the decline in non-renewable sources of energy such as oil. I’ll talk more about these principles next week.

Until then, I want to conclude this week’s column by mentioning the three ethics at the core of the Permaculture concept. In Permaculture One, Mollison and Holmgren described these as: Care for the Earth; Care for People; and Fair Share. The first ethic is self explanatory. The second suggests that all people should have access to what they need to live a safe, and healthy life. The third is a principle that most gardening and farming models overlook, and is based on the ethic we’re all taught as kids – only take what you need, and share the rest. Some permies call this, “return of the surplus”.

While some elements of permaculture are ripe for critique, I confess to having a great admiration for any movement that is built upon a set of foundational ethics like those above. What’s more, I believe they are the right ethics to build upon. We’re living in an age when most big, established institutions – business, politics and religion – are being white-anted from within by self interest and a desperation to cling to the status quo. In some cases, ethical foundations rotted away years ago. Permaculture offers a creative response.

Next week – The Principles of Permaculture Design

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 30th April, 2011.

St Patrick’s Day has come and gone for another year and a question beckons: did you get your sweet peas in? March 17 is the traditional date to sow Lathyrus odoratus seed on the Darling Downs, but in truth, sweet pea seed can be sown anytime in early to mid autumn, and if you miss the boat this season, you even get a second chance by sowing in early spring.

Nonetheless, St Pat’s Day is as good a reminder as any, so last Thursday afternoon you would have found my wife Kylie, brilliant woman that she is, racing against dusk to get her seeds in the ground. She’s hoping for a display the equal of what we had last November, but I fear that it ain’t gonna happen. The unusually wet spring of 2010 contributed to the lushest growth I’ve ever seen on sweet peas, to the point that our four metre long row of plants grew so tall that they almost doubled their six foot trellis. Flowers appeared in genuine profusion, and the resulting scent was mind-bendingly intoxicating.

Our garden is a joint passion, and therefore, a joint effort, yet Kylie doesn’t often get recognised for the many hours of work she puts in alongside me. So it was nice to hear visitors complimenting her on the sweet peas, and even asking for some tips on how to grow them.

Kylie starts, as all clever gardeners should, with the soil. What you’re aiming for with sweet peas (and edible peas for that matter) is a well worked soil that’s full of organic matter but not overly rich in nitrogen. Too fertile, and you’ll get lots of lush foliage growth at the expense of flowers. The solution is compost. A month or so prior to sowing Kylie adds a decent barrow load of home made compost to the sweet pea bed, as well as generous handful of lime per square metre to balance out any acidity. Some blood and bone will help provide slow release nutrients without making the soil too fertile.

Her next tip is to use saved seed. As the sweet pea season comes to a close each year we leave some pea pods on the vines to dry out. These are harvested and stored in a cool, dry place until autumn, before being soaked in a bowl of water the night before St Patrick’s Day. Nothing special is added to the water. The soaking alone helps the seeds absorb moisture, and by the following day, they’ve swelled up and are ready to go in the ground.

I should note that to save your own seed, you’ll need to grow an open pollinated, heirloom variety of sweet pea. If you try to save seed from a hybrid, the offspring won’t grow true to type, which simply means that you’ll get a bunch of seedlings that revert to either of the original hybrid’s parent varieties. Kylie mostly grows ‘Matucana’, an old variety from the 1920’s that bears bicoloured violet and maroon flowers with a knockout scent. The Diggers Club is a good source of heirloom sweet pea seed.

Beware the modern sweet peas. These are often sold in punnets at garden centres, and while they produce showy flowers, many are completely devoid of scent. It seems completely stark raving bonkers to me, that plant breeders would deliberately breed scent out of a plant bearing the species name “odoratus” but that’s plant breeders for you. As English garden writer Monty Don says, a sweet pea with no smell is like food without flavour.

Once you’ve got the seeds in the ground, be it on March 17 or whenever, it’s important not to overwater. If the seeds were soaked and the soil watered upon sowing, there is plenty of moisture for germination to occur, so hold off with the water until the seedlings appear in about seven days. As your seedlings grow, it will probably be necessary to tie them loosely to the trellis to get them heading in the right direction until the tendrils get a grip. Keep them powering along with regular moisture and a monthly application of liquid fish emulsion.

If you planted in autumn, you’ll be enjoying flowers by late spring or early summer. Don’t waste such special blooms by leaving them all on the plant – Kylie harvests the flowers regularly for use inside the house. She gives lots away to friends. The key is to just keep picking, because the more you pick, the longer the plants will flower. Eventually though, flowering will cease. This is your cue to let the pods dry out, in preparation for another magnificent display of colour and scent next year.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 26th March 2010. Photo by Justin Russell, Matucana sweet peas, Thistlebrook, October 2010.

Our relationship with food is changing. Some of us are growing, harvesting, cooking with, and eating, our own. Others are buying local, seeking out and purchasing food grown within an hour’s drive from home. More and more are waking up to the fact that their daily bread doesn’t magically appear on the supermarket shelves, but is the end product of a complex, and mostly hidden, supply chain.

Finally, it’s dawning on us that everything that goes in our mouths and fuels our bodies has a source. Someone, somewhere planted and tended the apple tree that bore the shiny red piece of fruit you had for morning tea. Same goes for the chicken you ate for dinner. And the wheat used to make the sandwich you had for lunch. And the sugar used to sweeten your morning coffee. Ad infinitum.

The associated reality is that the vast majority of the food we purchase from our local Coles or Woolies is practically anonymous. A label on the packaging or the price ticket might say “Product of Australia”, but for me, that’s small comfort. Where in Australia was the product grown? By whom was it grown, and what farming methods were used to produce it? Where was it packed? How was it transported?

Worse still the label might say “Product of California” or “Packed in NZ” or more likely, “Mix of Local and Imported Ingredients”. I’d have to be very determined indeed to trace the origins of every item in my trolley, and you could guarantee that at every turn, my efforts would be met with resistance by the giant food corporations who would prefer to keep their factory-style production methods a secret.

Some food growers, mostly small farmers and market gardeners, are taking an approach opposite to that of the industrial food barons. They’re embracing accountability. At the forefront of this movement is Joel Salatin.

Salatin is the patriarch of a relatively small, family run farm in Virginia’s picturesque Shenandoah Valley. He describes himself as a “Christian-libertarian-environmentalist-capitalist-lunatic-farmer”, but in reality is probably the world’s leading practitioner-advocate of farming that is local, humane, natural and yet innovative.

His Polyface Farm services more than 3000 families, 10 retail outlets, and 50 restaurants through on farm sales and local buying clubs. Salatin is vehemently opposed to industrial scale agriculture. His alternative is focussed on husbandry, both of the soil and the animals within his care, and transparency. One of the guiding principles stated on the Polyface website is that “Anyone is welcome to visit the farm anytime.  No trade secrets, no locked doors, every corner is camera-accessible.” Some farmers are offering guided farm tours and holding open days in an effort to develop a relationship with their customers, but when it comes to integrity, Salatin is a kind of agrarian high priest.

The good news is that Joel Salatin is currently in Australia on a lecture tour and will be appearing in Brisbane for one night only on the 4^th December.  As a speaker, Salatin is dynamite. He possesses the rare combination of vibrant intellect, practical wisdom and a healthy dose of wit. But the trait that fills venues around the world is an incredible sense of optimism. Salatin is literally walking the talk. His methods have been refined over three decades, and the proof, as they say, is in the pudding.

I’d encourage anyone interested in gardening, farming, local economies, organics, or those who are simply keen to hear a smart cookie speak about stuff that matters to make the trip to Brisbane next Saturday night. During the previous decade, we saw the emergence of the celebrity chef – think Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson, Maggie Beer, Kylie Kwong et al. My tip is that the current decade will witness the rise of the celebrity farmer, and to a large extent, home food production. We’ve reconnected with the kitchen. Now it’s time to reconnect with the ingredients, and the people that produce them. In this regard, I can think of no better exemplar than Joel Salatin. Check him out!

Joel Salatin will speak at Brisbane’s Northey Street City Farm from 6pm to 9pm on December 4^th, 2010. Limited tickets available at the door – book in advance by visiting the RegenAG website at www.regenag.com/workshops/joel-salatin-public-talks/.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 27th November 2010. Image courtesy Participant Media.

My wife’s Grandma, Rachel Flett, grew up as the only girl amongst eleven brothers on a scrubby holding at Kogan on the western Downs. Born just prior to the start of the Great War in 1912, Rachel came of age during the Great Depression. She experienced first hand its food shortages, drought and unemployment, but also its happy times, marrying local boy Edwin Flett in 1934 and making a home at the family property “Verland”, south east of Chinchilla.

By all accounts, Rachel was a skilled homemaker. She had to be. Feeding eleven brothers, and eventually six of her own children, in an era without supermarkets, satellite internet or seven-day-a-week shopping, is no small feat. Kylie recalls that during visits to the farm, the pantry was always well stocked with bottle upon bottle of jams, preserves, chutneys and pickles.

These goods were all well loved by the Fletts. But nothing was quite as prized as Grandma’s grape jam. One of the family’s favourite stories recalls the event following Rachel’s death in 2001 when a grandson found the last remaining jar of jam tucked away at the back of the pantry. So treasured was the find, and so treasured its maker, that the event was cause for great celebration. The story goes that everyone present tucked into grape jam and fresh cream sandwiches for lunch, and recalled a life well lived.

The grape variety Grandma Flett used to make her jam is Isabella. To this day the original vine, thick as a big bloke’s forearm, trails across a pergola above the back door of the farmhouse and despite no attention, still offers cooling shade and still bears grapes. I’m not sure that anyone makes jam from its fruit anymore, but the old Isabella vine is testimony to how much value generations of home growers can get for an investment of less than $20.

If you’re after a plant that’s ornamental, edible, resilient, long-lived, easy to propagate, and makes a wonderful jam, a grape vine is the plant for you. I’ve got four different table varieties planted along one side of my vegie patch: Sultana, Centennial Seedless, Crimson Seedless and for sake of nostalgia as much as its usefulness, an Isabella. All are setting fruit as I write, and if I manage to beat the possums and the King Parrots, we’re in for a heavy crop.

Of the four, Centennial Seedless and Crimson Seedless are the most manageable while Isabella and Sultana grow like the dickens. Every summer these two get unruly growth headed right back to the main arms while the canes I want to keep get tied to the trellis. Even so, the plants put on so much growth that I reduce their overall size by up to two thirds during winter. While dormant, I also spur prune all four varieties, which essentially involves cutting back all long canes to stubs of just two or three buds evenly spaced along the main arms.

Beyond pruning, grapes need little in the way of care. They are very drought tolerant, and will actually get sweeter during dry seasons as the sugars concentrate in the fruit. They don’t need lots of fertiliser, and their only main vice is a varying susceptibility to fungal diseases. Powdery mildew is probably the most common, but can be effectively controlled with a potassium bicarbonate based spray (such as EcoFungicide) during summer.

At this stage, Isabella is the only grape I grow that’s considered “dual purpose”. It’s a very old Vitis labrusca cultivar that was traditionally used as a wine grape, particularly in humid coastal areas because of its natural resistance to fungal diseases. Isabella makes a perfectly acceptable, though unspectacular wine, and is now more commonly grown as a table grape or even better, for cooking.

One of the main reasons Isabella grapes are so good for jam making is that unlike more modern table varieties, the fruit contains seeds. As any jam maker worth their salt knows, seeds usually contain pectin, and pectin is the magical ingredient that makes jam set. Isabellas fit the bill perfectly. So perfectly in fact that Kylie’s Mum recalls many hours spent leaning over boiling saucepans, sweat streaming from her forehead, skimming grape pips from the surface of the jam. Claims she lost weight every time it happened, but I bet the results were worth it.

I never got to taste Grandma Flett’s grape jam, but wish that I did. It sounds like the perfect accompaniment to my home baked sourdough, so I’m hoping that a new family tradition develops this summer: Kylie’s grape jam made with fruit harvested from our very own Isabella vine.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 14th November 2010. Photo by Flora Cyclam via flickr.

Regular readers of Secret Garden know that I’m a weather nerd, so it should come as little surprise to hear that at the end of each month, I religiously pull out my rainfall record and tally up the total for the preceding four weeks. Some months, the figure is cause for celebration, and optimism for the weeks ahead. Other months, more than I’d like to admit, it’s commiserations all round.

July was the latter. A paltry 24mm (one inch for the imperialists!) fell in the gauge – about half the long term Hampton average. This is just enough to keep the garden afloat during a cool winter, but on the back of an even paltrier 11mm in June, means that we’re heading into our driest months of the year with precious little moisture in the soil.

For purely ornamental gardens, a dry outlook isn’t much of a big deal. It means some jobs might need to be put off, and that some extra watering might be necessary to help young plants get established. But my garden is mostly about food. I’m setting it up to supply my family with as much home grown produce as possible from my two acre smallholding, and in this regard, it’s vital that I keep an eye on the weather forecasts and plan accordingly. The question is, how do you plan ahead when the weather is so fickle?

A good part of the answer is to understand the distinction between weather, and climate. Time is the key factor. Weather might be described as the atmospheric conditions over a short period of time, whereas climate refers to atmospheric patterns that occur over a long period of time. Global warming aside, climate is closely associated with the seasons and therefore, tends to be relatively stable, and consistent. With this in mind, my strategy should be to do what farmers do and plan for the months ahead using my garden’s long term climate as a basic guide.

The other thing I can do to plan ahead is consult indigenous culture, which in my view is a greatly overlooked source of wisdom about how to live well on earth’s driest inhabited continent. In Aboriginal society, landscape, plants, animals, ancestors and weather are all interconnected. By accumulating an intricate knowledge of the continent’s various climates over tens of thousands of years, the indigenous Australians developed a subtle description of the seasons and used their knowledge to predict the timing of various shifts in the weather.

As many as six, or as few as three seasons were recognised, depending on the location. In contrast, British settlers relied upon the basic four season description of summer-autumn-winter-spring so applicable to northern Europe. Though this remains the predominant model, indigenous wisdom is gradually being recognised.

Brisbane-based Gardening Australia presenter Jerry Coleby-Williams has taken a cue from indigenous climate observation to suggest that south-east Queensland experiences a fifth season. After a very brief spring in late August and early September, Jerry has observed that a pre-summer season occurs before the summer wet begins in December. He calls this pre-summer season “crematoria”.

It’s a foreboding kind of name, but one that perfectly describes the typically hot, dry, and windy weather that can persist during September, October and November. Last year we had a classic crematoria season marked by regular dust storms, and hot, north-westerly winds –awful conditions for gardening, particularly the establishment of new plants. Lots of gardeners relying on tank irrigation ran out of water.

Now I’m yet to hear the BOM identify a fifth season called crematoria, and in fact, the official climate models are predicting the development of a La Nina weather pattern during late spring and early summer. In other words it could get wet, and the evidence for crematoria is entirely anecdotal. But in my view Jerry’s on to something. If I’m to be serious about planning ahead for the coming season I’d be smart to take into consideration the potential for a few dry and windy months.

Here then, is my crematoria action plan: I’ll try to give young fruit trees better protection from drying wind and will water regularly; I’ll try to complete major plant-outs in the vegie garden following a rain event, instead of blindly following the calendar; I’ll top dress as many plants as possible with compost and replenish mulch in garden beds and around trees; I’ll attempt to make stored rainwater go further by using soil wetters and incorporating as much rotted organic matter as possible. Beyond that, I’ll continue to hold out hope that late 2010 will produce the creek flowing, dam filling rain we still so desperately need.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 7th August 2010.

Tomorrow is National Tree Day, and as in previous years, I’ll be getting outside and finding a place for a native seedling or two somewhere in my garden. This year, I’ve earmarked a spot for a Crows Ash, Flindersia australis. This species would have been indigenous to my area when the land was virgin forest, and there are still some fine old specimens around. A beauty can be found in the south-west corner of Peacehaven Botanic Park at Highfields, where Tree Day celebrations will be held tomorrow morning. As a complement I’ll also be planting a couple of fruit trees.

It might comes as a surprise, considering the lack of publicity such an important initiative receives, to hear that National Tree Day has been an annual event for the last 15 years. It was co-founded in 1996 by Olivia Newton-John and the environmental organisation Planet Ark, and to date, is responsible for planting more than 15 million native trees. Another one million or so will go in the ground tomorrow.

Some of the benefits of planting trees are obvious. At the most basic level, they create shade, helping to cool us down. You think this would be so simple that it’s elementary, but drive through some of the new estates in Toowoomba or Highfields and you’ll enter a surreal landscape almost totally devoid of any trees. Why run the air conditioner all day to cool yourself down in summer when a well located tree can do the job for free? You’re welcome to live where you like, but lest we end up inadvertently creating suburban deserts, I think it would be wise to plant more trees.

Maybe you’re of the opinion that you prefer your air conditioner, and all this tree planting caper is a bit of a lark. Let me try to convince you otherwise by pointing to the example of Kenya’s Green Belt Movement (GBM) and its inspiring founder, environmental and political activist Professor Wangari Maathai. Since 1977, GBM has planted more than 45 million trees in sub-Saharan Africa, established 6,000 village nurseries, and trained more than 30,000 poor rural women in skills such as horticulture, forestry, food processing, and bee-keeping.

The net result of such activity is that desertification in north east Kenya has been halted by GBM’s planting of long “green belts” in what was an eroded and deforested landscape. With reforestation comes increased biodiversity and restored ecosystems, as well as fewer crop failures and water shortages. Wangari Maathai received the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts. Her work is based on the belief that a healthy natural environment is at the heart of an equitable and peaceful society.

Contrast what’s happening in Kenya with the situation occurring in Niger, north-west Africa. Here, rampant desertification has encroached on what little arable land the already dry country possessed, leaving more than 80% of the landscape covered by desert and causing major food insecurity. Some reforestation efforts have been undertaken in recent years, but it hasn’t been enough. Now facing a prolonged drought, it is estimated that half of Niger’s population of 15 million is suffering form severe malnutrition. More than three million are classified as starving. Kids, as always, are being hit the hardest.

What’s the link between starving children in west Africa and a festive day of planting in the comparatively fertile Darling Downs in Australia. It’s the importance of trees. Once and for all we need to clear up the misconception that trees are little more than obstacles and inconveniences standing in the way of development. Let’s get real. Trees are vital. They provide habitat – for ourselves and for native animals – they help maintain healthy rural landscapes, they feed us, and we ought to never underestimate the role they play in enhancing our collective quality of life. Trees deserve far more respect than we currently afford them.

I’ll leave the last word to Wangari Maathai:

“I love the trees, I love the colour. To me they represent life, and they represent hope. I think it is the green colour. I tell people I think heaven is green.”

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 31st July 2010. Photo by Justin Russell – old growth Eucalypts, Peacehaven Botanic Park, Highfields.

The Toowoomba range is host to some fine gardens, but in my view they don’t get much finer than the rangetop paradise in Leslie Street known as Stirling House. Established by John and Jill Stirling in the 1960’s, and now owned by hospitable couple Colin Fitzgerald and Dr Viola Nicholson, the garden comprises two acres of magnificent cool climate trees, hundreds of roses, classic bluestone paths, and lots of lovely woodland perennials.

What Stirling House is most famous for though, is its camellias. There are dozens of beautiful specimens scattered amongst the garden, most in full flower when I visited last weekend and yet all of them outdone by the prized yellow species Camellia nitidissima.

As stunningly beautiful as this camellia was on the day (I’ll write about it in a later article), it was actually outshone for sheer visual splendour by another exotic plant. Like a gifted Academy Award winner being upstaged by a glamorous supporting actress, the star of the show when I visited Stirling House was undoubtedly a Magnolia denudata in full, exquisite bloom.

The Yulan, as Magnolia denudata is commonly known, makes an arresting sight when it produces masses of huge, pure white blooms on bare wood during the second half of winter. It certainly stopped the 18^th century plant explorers dead in their tracks. Imagine the sheer astonishment of a sweaty English botanist, trekking along an ancient pathway in the lower Himalayas, stumbling across a misty valley bleached white with the blooms of thousands of magnolias. The contrast with the less exotic flora back home would have been absolutely stark. It still is, especially when the blooms are admired against the backdrop of a clear winter sky.

Magnolia denudata was named for its region of origin in central China. Here it can still be found growing in moist upland forests amongst camellias and rhododendrons on deep, fertile soil. The genus magnolia was introduced to horticulture by the famous botanist Sir Joseph Banks, who was absolutely delighted to open a consignment from China in 1792 containing the first ever specimen of Magnolia denudata from Dr Alexander Duncan, a surgeon working in Canton.

From this point on, the flames of an international love affair with magnolias were kindled, and it’s fair to say that the passion for these magnificent plants never really went out. In 1820, a retired French army captain by the name Etienne Soulange-Bodin crossed Magnolia denudata with Magnolia liliiflora to produce the hybrid Magnolia x soulangeana. Combining the best qualities of each of its parents, “soulangeana” is now the most widely grown of all the deciduous magnolias, lighting up Toowoomba during August and September with its opulent, pink blushed flowers. It’s a decent plant, but by no means the best magnolia in cultivation.

In addition to the Yulan magnolia described at the outset, there are some other beauties worth seeking out. For small gardens Magnolia liliiflora ‘Nigra’ is the pick. It’s a slow grower that will eventually reach just a few metres tall and produces lovely dark purple flowers on a multi-stemmed shrub. Almost as good is Magnolia stellata, which has white star shaped flowers and rarely exceeds three metres in height.

For larger gardens my picks would be ‘StarWars’ a tall growing variety that continues flowering through summer and autumn, ‘Vulcan’ with it’s striking purple-red flowers, and ‘Elizabeth’, a classy, late flowering yellow cultivar that grows strongly and is capable of reaching six metres or more in height. Use it to accompany your yellow flowered camellia and be the envy of all your gardening friends!

If that’s your ambition, and it’s not actually one that I’d seriously recommend, better get your conditions right. Magnolias are ancient plants dating back to prehistory, but they do have fairly specific requirements to really perform well. Chief amongst these is a mountain soil that’s rich, deep, well drained and slightly acid. A cool climate is preferred, and protection from severe late winter frosts is important to prevent the flower show from ending in tears too early in the piece.

This all sounds quite specific, but thankfully, the perfect conditions for growing brilliant magnolias can be found all along the Great Dividing Range, from the Bunya Mountains in the north to the suitable parts of the Granite Belt to the south. For those out west, magnolias are a trickier proposition. The best advice I can give is to try the evergreen cultivars of Magnolia grandiflora such as ‘Little Gem’, ‘St Mary’s’ and ‘Exmouth’. You shouldn’t feel left out. The evergreens are just as stunning as their deciduous cousins, and more tolerant to boot.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 24th July 2010. Photo by Justin Russell – Magnolia denudata, Stirling House, Toowoomba.

To dig or not to dig, that’s the question. If you’re part of the legion of new vegie gardeners taking up the spade in a quest for the good life, you could be forgiven for wondering who you should believe. The advice seems completely contradictory. Should one take the advice of the no-dig advocates, who argue passionately for the spade to be left in the shed, or is it safest to believe the traditional gardeners, who argue that theirs is a tried and true method refined over hundreds of years? Or is there a third way that finds some common ground between the two extremes?

We’ll get to the answer later, but first, let’s explore what I mean by “no-dig” gardening. The concept has actually been around for decades, just under different names. It began in the1930’s with the Japanese farmer/philosopher/scientist Masanobu Fukuoka, who from 1938 until his death in 2008, experimented with various small scale farming techniques that he collectively referred to as “natural farming”. Fukuoka’s philosophy was based on a simple concept: the farmer should interfere as little as possible with natural processes. Crops could be grown, he argued, without machines, with no prepared fertiliser and no chemicals, yet attain yields equal to or greater than the conventional Japanese farm.

One of the main components of the Fukuoka approach was to use ancient techniques like cover cropping and seed balls in order to totally avoid having to cultivate the soil. Fukuoka’s concept was characterised as “no-till” farming and enthusiastically embraced during subsequent decades by both agricultural scientists and the growing band of farmers interested in natural farming methods. It wasn’t until the late 1970’s though, that a Sydney gardener named Esther Deans applied Fukuoka’s techniques to the domestic backyard.

In two well regarded books, Deans outlined the concept of “no-dig” gardening. Her basic idea was to build garden beds above the soil surface by layering various materials on top of each other like a kind of horticultural lasagne. Layer one is wet newspaper laid on the soil (or lawn) surface to smother weeds and grass. Layer two is straw or lucerne hay. Layer three is organic fertiliser such as pelletised chicken manure, or blood and bone. Layer four is straw. Layer five is manure. Layer six, the top layer, is good quality compost. Each layer is watered progressively as the beds are built.

Anyone who’s done a spot of composting will know what’s going here. When first made, a true no-dig garden is basically a fancy compost heap. A high nitrogen material (manure) combined with a high carbon material (straw) will decompose in the presence of moisture and oxygen, creating a soil-like material (humus) that is okay for growing plants in.

No-dig advocates claim a slew of advantages over traditional techniques. No-dig gardens don’t need to be cultivated, thereby eliminating damage to fragile soil flora and fauna. They are perfect for those who are unable to wield heavy tools. They are more fertile than traditional gardens. They can be made over really poor soil or even solid concrete.

Sounds great, doesn’t it. In practice, no-dig isn’t as simple as it appears, especially long term. As no-dig gardens decompose, they shrink, and need to be constantly topped up with copious quantities of organic matter. When built over a hard pan, serious drainage problems can develop in wet conditions. No dig garden beds need to be either really narrow or modular for ease of access. Then there’s the myth shattering truth that vegetables need to planted, and planting (even sowing) requires some degree of cultivation. There ain’t no such thing as a totally “no dig” vegetable garden.

So in answer to my original question, to dig or not to dig, my approach is to find a middle way. I’ve tried no-dig gardening, and it proved a tricky proposition. Instead, my philosophy is one of minimal till. I believe there are times when a good dig is beneficial for both the health of the garden, and the health of the gardener. While I don’t advocate the old techniques of double digging and annual winter cultivation, I have no qualms about digging in a green manure crop, cultivating the soil as part of my annual crop rotation, or growing carrots in ground worked to a fine tilth.

I suppose what I’m saying is that there’s a case to be made for digging, but with restraint rather than abandon. Before putting spade to soil, I try to use my brain. I ask myself questions, things like: “why massacre earthworms if I don’t have to”; and “do I really need dig this particular bed, or am I blindly following convention”. In gardening, as in life, the real answer is all about finding a healthy sense of balance.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 29th June 2010.

I was saddened last week to hear about the death of Highfields winemaker and avid conservationist, Don McLean. Though I didn’t know Don well, he struck me as a likeable sort of bloke, happy and quick to smile, always ready to disarm someone with his cheeky sense of humour. Don was generous too. When I toured his vineyard and interviewed him for a story a couple of years ago, I came away not only brimming with knowledge about growing grapes and the winemaking process, but sporting two bottles of Highfields finest to boot. It was an unexpected gesture from a really genuine person.

In the brief time that I knew him, I learnt a few worthwhile lessons from Don. One was to care deeply about your place in the world. On one of my visits to Highfields Wines, Don took me on a tour of the property where he shared openly about his love for the land and his determination to care for it.

He told me about the indigenous history of the Cawdor district, pointing out landmarks where the first inhabitants conducted ceremonies and showing me sites on the property where artefacts had been found. Don showed me the property’s permanent creek and natural waterfall which is believed to be a campsite on one of the trails used by Aboriginal tribes travelling to the Bunya Mountains for the great bunya nut feasts. He showed me parts of the property gradually being revegetated using native plants, and we even stopped to check out a rare native crinum, blooming for the first time in years thanks to good summer rain.

Don introduced me to a little known gem of a place called Franke Scrub, a pocket of dry rainforest in a gully adjoining his property that is untouched by bushfire or the logger’s chainsaw. Franke Scrub is a remnant of the forest that covered much of the escarpment prior to suburban development and contains an unusually diverse mix of rare and endangered plants and native fauna. I was left with no doubt that Don was determined to see the scrub protected, despite plans at the time to build a new road smack through the middle of it.

Another thing I learnt from Don was the importance of looking after your soil. Highfields Wines is one of just a handful of unirrigated vineyards in Australia. When Don planted the first vines in 1998, he defied conventional practice at the time by purchasing plants grafted onto a drought resistant rootstock, planting the vines into ground that was deep ripped to half a metre, watering just once upon planting, and then covering the soil with mulch. Not a single vine from this first planting was lost. Don conceded that 1998 was wet, but suggested that ongoing success through severe drought was due to the vines’ extensive root system and the continually increasing capacity of the soil to store moisture.

This kind of careful husbandry has benefits for the winemaker and the drinker too. By growing vines without irrigation Don was able to produce fruit of intense flavour, and through the application of animal manures and blood and bone rather than synthetic urea, he managed to make what he described as “hangover free wine”. Studies have subsequently shown a link between urea, and the headaches some people get as a result of drinking wine.

A trendy word to describe Don’s approach to winemaking would be “holistic”. I think he was probably more pragmatic than that, preferring to see it simply as common sense: for the land to sustain future generations, it has to be carefully nurtured, not abused. In other words, you reap what you sow.

The final thing I learnt from Don, was that it’s okay, even necessary sometimes, to adopt a DIY approach to life. Don had a background in agricultural science, but as a winemaker, he was completely self-taught. He joked that his winemaking consultant was his partner Alison, and that he relied on old fashioned techniques like testing out his own product. “We rely on taste, smell and sight to produce our wines, not a computer,” Don told me. His approach proved to be both sustainable and successful.

I offer my sincere condolences to Don McLean’s family and friends. No doubt he will be sorely missed, and I’m thankful that I got to meet Don, and learn something from his determined approach to life.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle, 22nd May 2010. Photo by Justin Russell – Don in his vineyard.