Australia’s 10,000 registered beekeepers are worried. In the last 20 years hive numbers across the country have halved, and the industry is currently battening the hatches for a perfect storm of multiple pressures on the European honeybee.

Chief among their concerns is the phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). This occurs when bees simply vanish from their hives leaving the capped brood and queen in abandoned colonies. CCD was first observed in Pennsylvania in 2006, and losses in North America and Europe have averaged about 30 to 40 percent in the years since. It is important to note that no cases of Colony Collapse Disorder have been recorded in Australia.

Does that mean we can rest on our laurels. Definitely not! Beekeepers are worried that a major outbreak of the feral Asian honeybee, which was first detected in Queensland in 2007, will bring into the country the parasite Varroa destructor, a mite that has been implicated in CCD overseas. In the long term, however, both varroa and the Asian honeybee can be controlled. The issue that really petrifies beekeepers is the growing use of insecticides.

Editor of the Australasian Beekeeper Journal, Des Cannon, wrote in a recent editorial that he regards “the use of pesticides in our environment as the single biggest threat to the survival of beekeeping”. Cannon singles out for special attention a class of chemicals called neonicotinoids, so called new generation insecticides that have gained widespread usage since they were introduced in the mid 1990′s.

Neonics, as these chemicals are commonly known, include the popular garden insecticides Confidor and Conguard. Both products are systemic. This means that although neonics can be applied in a variety of ways – as a soil drench, a foliar spray, in granular form or as a seed treatment – they work by being absorbed into a plant’s vascular system where they are able to attack the nervous system of any insect that ingests the chemical.

Herein lies the problem with neonics such as imidacloprid and clothianidin: they are extremely toxic to bees. No big deal says Bayer CropSciences, the multinational company that sold more than a billion dollars worth of neonicotinoid products last year. They insist that bees spend little time foraging on infected pollen, that little if any neonic insecticide finds its way into hives, and if it does, the concentration is so low that the effect on hive health is negligible.

These claims are called into question by the findings of a Purdue University study released last week in the peer reviewed journal Plos One. Researchers found damning evidence that bees from hives located near neonic treated cornfields were exposed to insecticide in various ways throughout their foraging period, and were actively foraging on maize pollen.

Most alarmingly though, the research indicated that the neonic clothianidin was present on bees found dead at the entrance to hives as well as in pollen collected by the bees and stored inside the hive. Considering both imidacloprid and clothianidin are almost universally used in Australia as seed treatments for canola (some of which is also genetically modified), corn and other crops, beekeepers have every right to be concerned about the future of their livelihood.

So what can we as gardeners do to support the local honeybee population. Firstly, we ought to abandon formal style gardens for the environmental folly that they are and embrace a more relaxed, cottage style dominated by flowering plants such as daisies (among the best bee attracting plants), clovers, fruit trees, herbs and natives including grevilleas and dwarf eucalypts.

Secondly, and most importantly, gardeners should cease using imidacloprid and other neonicotinoid chemicals. Most pest problems can be solved in the long run by creating a biodiverse garden full of a broad range of plants, along with organic soil building techniques. The latter will help boost the immune response of plants, making them naturally resistant to any minor pest outbreaks that might occur.

Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society made an interesting comment on an Australian chat show last year. He said that “worms are more important than people, and the reason for that: worms can live on the earth without people, but we can’t live on the earth without worms.” Whether you love or hate what Watson does each summer in the Southern Ocean, his comment is spot on.

We’re not the centre of the universe. We can’t live on the earth without worms any more than we can without honeybees, so the sooner we get over ourselves, and drop the sense of entitlement that has infested all corners of our privileged society, the better.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 28th January 2011. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Don’t forget to visit our new site The Radish, edible gardening from roots to fruits!!

Being a Dad is one of the great joys of my life. Child raising isn’t without its challenges, of course, but neither is it without some happy by-products. As a parent, I’ve had the pleasure of reading lots of kid’s books and watching the occasional kid’s movie. The best of these are brilliant works of art, and while I’ve got a soft spot for oldies like Mary Poppins (love the chimney sweep scene) my favourite so far is the 2006 film version of EB White’s classic fable, Charlotte’s Web.

One of the major themes of the movie, or at least the theme that gets telegraphed most insistently, is the idea of finding the miraculous in the commonplace. The closing song leaves little doubt about the “ordinary miracle” concept, and while the same theme is present in the book, EB White takes a less sentimental approach.

The novel’s title character, a spider named Charlotte, befriends a runt pig and saves him from the axe by writing a series of well chosen adjectives in her web above the pig’s pen. Charlotte describes Wilbur the runt as “some pig”, “terrific”, and “radiant”, and by the time the word “humble” appears in the spider’s web one morning toward the end of the book, crowds are flocking to witness the miracle first hand. As a consequence, her friend’s bacon is spared from the smoke house, and Wilbur lives to see winter.

What fascinates me about EB White’s story is the suggestion that people are drawn to the extraordinary sight of words written in spider silk, yet they overlook the real miracle – the web itself. There’s nothing grand about the sight of a dew laden web, catching sunlight on an autumn morning, but the incredible strength of the threads and the precision of the structure makes a spider’s web one of nature’s truest marvels. Every time we walk past such wonders without a second thought, we do ourselves a disservice.

Gardeners claim to love the natural world, but we’re as guilty of overlooking ordinary, everyday miracles as much as anyone. The problem stems from what amounts to a perpetual quest for the newest, the brightest, and the boldest. It’s exacerbated by some of the big garden centres and the broader horticulture industry, both of which are obsessed with the development of new plants with showier flowers that become further and further removed from their wild ancestors. We miss far more than spider webs.

I think there’s plenty we can learn from children. A child development expert could explain why, but I’ve noticed that kids are innately aware of, and get incredible joy from, the small details in their surroundings. When my kids pick a flower for their mum, they usually choose something insignificant, and unspectacular. When they appreciate autumn colour, it’s through a single leaf, not an entire tree. When they pick a piece of fruit from the garden they rarely salivate over the largest specimen. In a child’s world, little things are extraordinary.

One of the plants my kids enjoy the most is the common sweet violet, Viola odorata. We’re growing it as a groundcover on either side of semi-shaded path leading to our back door, where it also adjoins the kid’s sandpit. When the plant is in bloom from early winter to spring, the flowers get picked constantly for everything from making perfume to decorating volcanoes to sprinkling over miniature ponds. There are hundreds of other flowers to choose from in the garden. But it’s a purple wonder the size of a thumbnail that my children gravitate to.

I share the kid’s enthusiasm for violas. My favourite cool season flower is the humble Johnny Jump Up, Viola tricolour, a plant that earned its common name because of a tendency to self seed and pop up spontaneously in the garden. Its other common name is heartsease. This refers to the plant’s historical use as a medicinal herb, but I think it perfectly suits Viola tricolour’s ability to inspire cheer on the bleakest days of mid-winter. I also grow the larger flowered pansies (which are viola hybrids), but for me, a clump of happy looking Johnny Jump Ups is pure gold.

The 19th century American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that “the invariable mark of wisdom is the ability to see the miraculous in the common”. I’ll leave it for others to judge whether I’m wise or not, but as a gardener, and a dad, I think it’s vital that I learn to see with eyes attuned to nature’s common glories. If I can pass such wisdom onto my kids, and they pass it on to their own children, I’ll die a very contented man.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 4th June 2011. Photo by Justin Russell – common violet, Viola odorata.

Suddenly, after reading about them in an apple growing book of all places, I’ve developed an interest in mushrooms. Or more specifically, fungi. Mushrooms are nothing more than the fruiting bodies of a fungal organism running through some kind of substratum such as wood, or more commonly, soil. The organism itself takes the form of microscopic fibres called hyphae, which in turn form an underground, cotton wool like mass called a mycelium. You may have come across the white fibres of a mycelium while digging in the garden.

I don’t like to overstate things, but in the case of mycelium, mind blowingly awesome is the term that springs to mind. Mycelium can form underground networks many thousands of kilometres long, and is thought by scientists to be the largest organism in the world. A single fungus in Oregon, for example, has been found to cover an area equivalent to 1665 football fields and is estimated to be more than 2,000 years old.

Mycelium sequesters carbon dioxide. It plays a vital role in decomposing plant matter, and generally has a beneficial relationship with plants, aiding in water absorption, distributing nutrients, and conferring resistance to soil borne pathogens. There is evidence that fungi can “bio-remediate” polluted land, protect houses from termites, and at least one mushroom expert, mycologist Paul Stamets, has argued that the solution for the nuclear contamination around Fukushima, is mycelium. You can encourage the growth of mycelium in your garden by ceasing the use of toxic fungicides.

No less remarkable is the use of fungi as food. If I’m ever forced to choose a final meal, a contender would have to be fried mushrooms, seasoned with salt, pepper, thyme and a splash of Tabasco sauce, served on home baked sourdough toast. Or plain old mushies on toast. It’s a dish fit for a king in my opinion, and the Holy Grail for me is to cook it up with mushrooms that I’ve grown myself, or better still, foraged from the wild.

Every autumn, a couple of different fungi appear beneath a stand of Monterey Pines along our front boundary, and another type always pop up in large clumps in various parts of the lawn. With the hope of scoring a free breakfast or two, I bought myself a mushroom book, and have managed to identify at least one species – the small fungi growing in the lawn are magic mushrooms. For some this discovery would be like stumbling across a gold nugget, but the hardest drugs I consume are caffeine and alcohol. Mind altering hallucinogens aren’t my thing, as besides, it’s illegal to consume magic mushrooms in Australia. Including those growing in your back lawn.

The other two species growing under the pine trees I’ve yet to positively identify. At this point I need to provide a serious caveat to anyone considering foraging for wild mushrooms – take care! Some fungi are poisonous, and can cause effects ranging from mild diarrhoea to death. If you consume a Fool’s Funnel, for instance, you’ll probably break out a major sweat, but mistake a Death Cap for a field mushroom, and it’ll be a case of lights out.

The golden rule of mushroom foraging is simple: “If in doubt, go without”. This implies that before any fungus is consumed, it must be positively identified. Mushroom books contain a step-by-step identification key, and the author of mine, John Wright of River Cottage fame, suggests that: (i) you should never eat a fungus if you don’t know its name; (ii) you should only eat a fungus if it agrees with the book’s key, and the description, and the photograph; and (iii) only a small amount should be consumed when trying a species for the first time. Got it?

If this foraging business all sounds like too much hassle, it’s entirely feasible to grow your own mushrooms at home. Kits are available in nurseries from about April to October, and they represent pretty good value for money. I manage to get up to four kilograms of mushies from a kit costing around $25, so it’s cheaper than buying mushrooms from the shop and as with most produce, home grown mushrooms are also far superior. The rubbery excuses for fungus they sell in the supermarket taste like pencil erasers compared to home grown mushrooms.

I hope you’ll share my new found appreciation for mushrooms. Two hundred years ago, no-one would ever have believed that fungi could be so interesting, let alone realise that the vast web of mycelium beneath our feet may hold the solution to some of the world’s big problems.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 14th May 2011. Image by Joel Hagerman via flickr.com.

In last week’s Secret Garden I introduced the permaculture concept, and it’s three guiding ethics. In this week’s sequel, I want to talk principles. Permaculture co-founder Bill Mollison first outlined a set of design principles in his 1988 epic, Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual. The book is thick enough to chock a semi-trailer, so broad is its scope, so when permaculture co-founder David Holmgren restated the principles in a more accessible format in 2003, the overhaul was very welcome. Here they are, along with my brief take on each.

Observe and Interact

Take the time to engage with the natural world, and design a garden that is tailor made to a particular site. Alexander Pope put it this way: “consult the genius of the place in all”.

Catch and Store Energy

Harvest resources while they are abundant, and store them for later use when they’re scarce. Rainwater tanks are an excellent example of this principle, as is the traditional practice of preserving the harvest for use during winter.

Obtain a Yield

Holmgren states this as “you can’t work on an empty stomach”. When a starter vegie grower brings in a first harvest, for example, or some income is derived from a project early on, it provides a boost, and the project is likely to go ahead and thrive.

Apply Self Regulation and Accept Feedback

The three permaculture ethics are an important means of self regulation, but it’s important to learn from your mistakes. Seek constructive criticism, and observe the feedback provided by natural systems. If you plant a cactus in a bog, and it rots, accept the feedback and resolve to plant a moisture lover in its place.

Use and Value Renewable Resources and Services

Nature is abundant, with more than enough renewable resources to satisfy our basic needs. Why ordinary citizens continue to prop up fossil-based industries, when the solutions are under our collective nose, is beyond me.

Produce No Waste

Trade your council Green Bin for a compost bin. Minimise your packaging and reuse it where possible. Or as self-sufficiency pioneer John Seymour once said “the dustman should never have to call”.

Design From Patterns to Details

If we apply permaculture principle one, we’ll see that patterns exist in nature, and they can be used successfully in our gardens. Once these “broad brush strokes” have been made, it’s easy to fill in the details.

Integrate Rather Than Segregate

An ideal example of this principle is compost. More than the sum of it’s parts, compost contains various elements – moisture, plant waste, animal manure – which combine together for the common good.

Use Small and Slow Solutions

The bigger they are, the harder they fall. When size and speed become excessive, maintenance becomes difficult and the crash, when it comes, is a lot harder than ought to be. Pay attention to scale.

Use and Value Diversity

The more diverse an ecosystem (or garden), the more unique it is, and the more resilient it becomes to a variety of threats. Rather than putting all your eggs in one basket, diversify. Mix things up.

Use Edges and Value the Marginal

Permies argue that where two different elements overlap, there is an intense area of productivity. An often cited example is where forest meets open grassland. Some of our most productive fruiting plants come from margins such as this.

Creatively Use and Respond to Change

Since moving to Hampton in 2006 my family has been quietly designing, and implementing a rough plan as a response to issues such as peak oil and climate change. I refuse to fear change, and instead try to make it work for myself, my family and my community.

There’s a perception in horticultural circles that permaculture is little more than a quirky method of gardening, using novelties such as herb spirals, swales, chook domes, and off the wall things called keyhole beds. However, these are simply techniques that are supposed to fit within a broader philosophical context. Taken as a whole, permaculture is seen by many as the clearest template yet of how we can best design human settlements in partnership with the natural world.

Personally speaking, I’ve been interested in permaculture since I started getting serious about gardening 12 years ago. But for reasons that I’m yet to properly define, something has stopped the concept from jumping up and grabbing me by the throat. Maybe it’s that I’ve seen some weedy, overgrown, and to be frank, ugly permaculture gardens. Maybe it’s simply that I don’t yet understand permaculture well enough to give it a proper go. Then again, maybe, just maybe, permaculture is truly revolutionary, and I’m yet to realise that it offers the best shot at thriving in a swiftly changing world. Time will tell.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 7th May 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.

Not long after my daughter started school, she arrived home one day with a pocket full of small, marble sized acorns gathered from the playground. To Marley the fistful of nuts she thrust out in front of me was simply a collection of beautiful objects, but I was old enough to know their true significance. Each of the acorns, I explained, was a seed, and if just one was planted and tended, it would eventually grow to become a mighty oak tree.

For the sake of reference I described to her the oak tree that bore the acorns. A magnificent Southern Live Oak (Quercus virginiana), the tree stands in the grounds of Geham State School on the New England Highway between Toowoomba and Crows Nest. It was planted from an acorn more than a century ago, commemorating the local boys who went off to fight in the Boer War. Today, the Geham oak tree is a huge specimen with a 30 metre crown, much loved by the school community as a living landmark, and a place to escape the summer heat.

Every time I stand under that oak tree I’m filled with a sense of wonder. To be in the presence of something so ancient and spectacular is a humbling experience, a reminder that there are things in the world that are bigger and grander than I am.

The Geham oak tree reminds me too, of a John Muir story. In 1874, the famous American naturalist was visiting a friend who had a cabin in the Sierra Mountains of California. One December afternoon a fierce wind storm moved in from the Pacific, strong enough to bend and toss colossal trees like they were fragile blades of grass.

Instead of retreating to the shelter of the cabin Muir went outside, scaled a high ridge, and climbed to the top of a 30 metre tall Douglas Fir tree to ride out the storm. In his book The Mountains of California, Muir describes an intense experience.

“The sounds of the storm corresponded gloriously with this wild exuberance of light and motion. The profound bass of the naked branches and boles booming like waterfalls; the quick, tense vibrations of the pine-needles, now rising to a shrill, whistling hiss, now falling to a silky murmur; the rustling of laurel groves in the dells, and the keen metallic click of leaf on leaf.

I kept my lofty perch for hours, frequently closing my eyes to enjoy the music by itself, or to feast quietly on the delicious fragrance that was streaming past.”

I can’t help wondering, if John Muir were alive today, how would he respond to some of the language that has been used in the last month to describe the natural world he loved so much? Just a single editorial in the Courier Mail of February 3^rd used terms like “the fury of nature”, “Yasi the destroyer”, “Yasi hits below the belt”. The floods were described in various news stories as “fierce”, “like an atomic bomb”, a “war zone”, “Mother Nature’s cruel wrath”.

I qualify anything I write on this issue by saying that I haven’t lived through a cyclone, or lost a family member in the floods, or come home to a house gutted by bushfire. But I have to ask: is Mother Nature truly angry with us? Is she vengeful, full of wrath and fury? Is she like a dirty street brawler that hits below the belt? Can we honestly compare the floods to the devastation of Hiroshima or the Somme?

Of course not. Nature might be indiscriminate and uncompromising, but it is not out to get us. Nature and humanity are not adversaries. I mean no disregard to those who have suffered through natural disasters, but I believe that the best response we can have toward nature is one of awe. Fear is certainly warranted at times, but it should be the kind of fear that is based on respect, that recognises our arrogance toward nature and considers the need for us to be humble.

John Muir finishes his account of the windstorm with these words:

“When the storm began to abate, I dismounted and sauntered down through the calming woods. As I gazed on the impressive scene, all the so called ruin of the storm was forgotten, and never before did these noble woods appear so fresh, so joyous.”

The truth is that nature sustains us – physically, mentally and spiritually. We’d be wise to put aside our hostility. Go outside, and take in a grand vista. Walk barefoot through the morning dew. Gather fruit in the afternoon gloaming. Rest in the shade of a big old oak tree. Make peace, give thanks for nature’s gifts and you’ll find renewal, and hope.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 12th February 2011. Photo by Justin Russell, Southern Live Oak at Geham State School.

I’ve had quite a few letters the last couple of weeks from readers concerned that a particular plant might be dying from the recent wet conditions. Catherine from Crow Nest wrote, for example, “After all the rain our apricot tree is looking very sad – its leaves are all brown. Is there anything we should do to ensure it doesn’t die?”

Considering we’ve spent the last decade getting used to gardening during drought, this is a very pertinent question. The weather has well and truly swung from hot and dry to the other extreme, cool and wet. As a consequence all the rules from the last 10 years are being rewritten as we come to grips with the fact that the Darling Downs is indeed on the fringe of the subtropics and as such, can experience very rainy summers. Our soils are now loaded with moisture, the water table is high enough to get springs popping up all over the place, and for some plants, the conditions have become very inhospitable.

The first sign that something is wrong with a plant during excessively wet conditions is usually wilting or yellowing leaves. It seems totally counterintuitive. You’d assume that when there’s so much moisture in the soil, plants will be lush and perky. But when soil becomes saturated, all the air pockets are removed and conditions become anaerobic. The consequence for some plants is that fine feeder roots are deprived of oxygen and start to rot, which shows up above ground in terms of damage to the plant foliage.

Some plants are adapted to wet conditions and can live in perennially wet soils. Some can survive short periods of inundation, and recover once soils start to “breathe”. Others absolutely hate having wet feet. In my garden there have been quite a few losses in the last two weeks, and some plants look like they’re teetering on the edge of oblivion. The worst of all have been silver or hairy foliaged plants. Artemisias, buddleias, salvias, gazanias, rosemaries, lepechinias, ceanothus, and arctotis – all of which are supremely drought tolerant – are either dead or dying.

As sad as it is, many will need to simply be ripped out and replaced. If the foliage of a plant has all gone brown and dropped, like Catherine’s apricot, try scratching away a layer of bark with a fingernail to see if there’s still living tissue. If the layer below the bark is bright green, the plant may well survive. If the scratch reveals a brown layer, the plant is probably dead. Give it a few weeks, and then send it to horticultural heaven. Choosing replacements will be tricky, because the new ideal for our climate is plants that can equally tolerate extreme wet and extreme dry. Ornamental grasses, sedges, cannas, rainforest margin plants, and agapanthus fit the bill, and our local plant palette will no doubt adapt as we get more familiar with boom and bust conditions.

For those plants in your garden that are teetering, perhaps with yellow or wilted leaves but some signs of life, there are a few actions you can take to help them recover. I’m forever saying it, but start by seeing this event as an exercise in patience. Give the soil time to drain naturally, perhaps scraping away mulch to allow sun and wind to aid in the drying process. Clay soils will take longer to dry than loamy soils.

As you’re waiting for the soil to dry, which could take weeks, try spraying plants with Yates Anti-Rot. This product is applied to the foliage and travels down through the plant’s vascular system to the roots. The active ingredient phospahric acid inhibits the growth of root rotting fungi such as phytophthora, and is particularly useful for treasured trees.

Once the soil becomes workable, there are three things you can do to help it recover from inundation. The first is to throw on a handful of lime per square metre. Waterlogged soils tend to become acidic, so a dressing of lime will help get the pH back into balance. Secondly, throw on a handful per square metre of blood and bone. This helps replace nutrients leached from the soil by heavy rain. Finally, incorporate some compost into garden beds. This will help get some oxygen back into the soil and provide a boost of beneficial micro-organisms.

All is not lost. Being a glass half full bloke, I’ve taken to wandering through the garden with fresh eyes. I’m planning to redesign some areas and as for the dying plants, no quarter will be given. They’ll be unceremoniously ripped out and replaced with something more appropriate to the booms and busts of our awe inspiring climate.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 29th January 2011. Photo by Justin Russell, apricot tree, Villa Vista, Killarney.

I never thought it could happen being located on the western fall of the Great Dividing Range at 750m above sea level, but we experienced some minor flooding here at Thistlebrook yesterday afternoon. The same intense downpour that caused flash flooding in Toowoomba swept through Hampton at about midday. Within 10 or 15 minutes water was running everywhere. It poured through the garden washing away paths, inundating nursery trees, flooding our sewerage system and turning our access road into a raging torrent.

After another heavy downpour early this morning the new creek at our front gate is still running strongly, and has carved some huge ruts in the road. If the rain eases we should be able to get our car out by tomorrow morning, but for now, we’re enjoying indoor pursuits and doing our best to keep the kids relatively sane. We offer our condolences to those who’ve lost family and friends Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley, and our heartfelt sympathies to everyone who has lost homes and livelihoods. The silver lining is that after years of severe drought, the big local dams are full and we’re hopefully set up for some good years ahead.

Check out these photos from yesterday, when our road turned into a creek.

It’s brutal, unrestrained warfare. Me versus them. The lone, heroic gardener armed only with a pressurised spray pack, a pair of plastic goggles and a respirator, taking on a swarming, orc-like army of pests vying for ultimate control of the garden. To the victor shall go the spoils, namely basketfuls of home grown fruits and vegetables necessarily laced with a cocktail of toxic chemicals.

This is the way some so called “gardening experts” distort the gentle art of growing your own food. Theirs is a world of paranoia, where pests lurk around every corner, waiting patiently until the cover of darkness to wipe out a ripening tomato or a broccoli leaf. Like suburban Kim Jong-ils with better haircuts and cooler spectacles, they have stockpiles of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides sitting innocuously in their garden shed. Unlike the North Korean supreme leader, the warrior gardeners have no hesitation in using these backyard weapons of mass destruction on anything that dare spoil their infantile notions of garden perfection.

To those gardeners who fit the description above, here’s a reality check: there is no such thing as the perfect, blemish free garden. Real gardens will always contain weeds. They’ll always be attractive to insects that feed on fruit and foliage. They’ll always be prone to fungus “attacks” when the weather is warm and humid. And guess what. All the midnight fretting and gung-ho spraying in the world ain’t gonna change it. In fact, such practices will probably make your problems worse.

My approach to “pest control” is somewhat more relaxed. In part, this is a reflection of my personality, as much as my beliefs – I consider myself a fairly gentle soul. A peace lover. It takes a lot to get me really riled, and as far as I can remember, the last time I punched someone in the nose was way back in Grade 8 when I took on a bloke called Donald who was bullying a deaf kid. I’m anything but a saint, yet for whatever reason, I mostly manage to vent my spleen by means like the pen, rather than the sword.

So backyard warfare’s not my game. I get asked all the time what spray should be used for such and such a pest, and I’m tempted each time to suggest doing nothing at all. More often than not, that’s what I do – nothing. I rarely spray, and when I do, it’s with something organic that is as gentle as possible. I’m not out to beat the bugs, and I have no delusions of control over the natural world. I’m keen to make peace, not wage war.

What I’d like to see is gardeners practising something along the lines of the Slow Food movement’s concept of “the co-producer”. Consider this quote from the Slow Food Australia website:

“We consider ourselves co-producers, not consumers, because by being informed about how our food is produced and actively supporting those who produce it, we become a part of – and a partner in – the production process.”

To me the key word is partner. Slow Food advocates are determined not to simply act like leaches on the ample backside of industrial farming, bleeding it dry. They’re not parasites or competitors. They’re partners. What would it look like if gardeners took a similar approach by partnering with nature rather than constantly fighting against it?

The starting point would be a radical shift in attitude. A myth still prevails that human beings must dominate and subdue the natural world with the aim of fashioning a sense of order and control from something chaotic and hostile. My rebuff for this argument is to point to the catastrophic floods currently drowning Pakistan. It is an act of pure pretence, and indeed arrogance, to believe that the natural world can be tamed. It cannot. So instead of deluding ourselves with the notion that we can bend nature to fit around us, we need to do the opposite – find ways that we can shape our lives to fit with nature. That’s what partners do.

From the point of view of a determined fruit and veg grower, I’m pragmatic enough to acknowledge that there will be times when some sort of intervention is justified. I’m not suggesting that you never, ever, spray. But much of what gets passed off as gardening advice bears more resemblance to the totalitarian ravings of backyard megalomaniacs than it does practical wisdom. My advice is to put down your chemical weapons. We are not at war. Nature is not the enemy.

It’s that time of the year again, when I look out my study window to see a landscape that’s neither here, nor there. Gone is the frost bleached grass and golden light of June. Gone is the crystal-like starkness of July.  It’s mid August, and while the occasional magnolia or daffodil enlivens the scene, the view from my vantage point is mostly of a garden where all the colours lose their definition and blend to form a kind of drab, muddy olive.

Small wonder then, that people get so easily seduced by big flowers in the dying days of winter. I’m not immune. A few weeks ago in this column I positively gushed about a Yulan magnolia in Toowoomba, and though it was a genuinely spectacular sight, I realise now that the tree’s beauty was intense, but fleeting. By now, the display will be waning, and within weeks, all trace of July glory will be stored away as happy memories.

What I want from my garden, besides wholesome food and a feeling of peace, is a human scale landscape that resonates with deep and abiding beauty. Some people approach the garden like they would a serious of casual flings. They get all hot and heavy about a particular plant one month, and when it loses its lustre, go all ga-ga about something else. That kind of infatuation does nothing for me.

Instead, as I become more experienced as a gardener I’m learning to appreciate subtle, more lasting beauties. This is especially so during the drab days of August when there’s little else by way of distraction and I can train my eye to really see. Suddenly, I start to notice that the garden is actually full of colour, just not as gaudy as that in spring and summer. And there are some wonderful textures to admire, from the felty softness of lamb’s ears to the lustrous gloss of a camellia japonica leaf.

But what really catches my eye is an interesting array of barks. If there’s such a thing as a true gardener, you can pick them, says Jackie French, by their appreciation of bark. Really? When was the last time you took a proper look at a tree with beautifully patterned or wonderfully textured bark?

There are plenty to choose from. One of my favourites has to be the snow gum, Eucalyptus pauciflora, which has so beautifully patterned and coloured bark that it looks like it was painted on the tree by God himself. I’ve yet to see it offered for sale in a nursery this far north of the Snowy Mountains, but if it was, I’d snap one up and give it a go. Another of my favourites is the bark of Eucalyptus maculata, commonly called spotted gum, and even the bark of the locally common Sydney blue gum is beautiful.

If your garden is too small for a massive eucalypt, and most these days are, there are still many trees to choose from. Crepe myrtles, which range from shrubs to small trees, have smooth, patterned bark a bit like that of a snow gum, and it offers a timeless counterpart to the tree’s dazzling summer flowers and autumn foliage. Also smooth but wonderfully rust coloured is the bark of the Irish Strawberry Tree, Arbutus unedo. It makes a nice evergreen shade tree and is great for kids to climb.

River birch, Betula nigra, has a lovely exfoliating bark that flakes away to reveal underlying layers of cream, pink and orange. Snakebark maples such as Acer davidii have unusual green bark with prominent vertical stripes and are worth tracking down from a specialist supplier. There are some good examples in Davidson Arboretum at Highfields, along with lots of Japanese maples. Many of these have bark colours that glow during winter, the pick in my opinion being the coral bark maple, Acer japonica ‘Sango Kaku’.

Another plant I really like for its bark is the cherry tree. Some have amazing glossy bark that when rubbed, polishes up like the finest cabinet timber. The most incredible bark you’ll ever see, and I say this hypothetically because I’ve only seen it in photos, is the bark of the Tibetan cherry, Prunus serrula. You’d swear that you were looking at a piece of French polished mahogany.

Then there’s the green bark of Illawarra flame trees, the bark of young apple trees, the rough hewn bark of Chinese elms – seriously, I could go on for hours. The point I’m trying to make is straightforward: flowers are fleeting, and there are other aspects to the garden that have a beauty and a charm that endure. Like bark. It seems insignificant, but that’s how life goes. Some of the most beautiful things abhor the limelight, revealing their wonder only to those who are prepared to really look.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 14th August 2010. Photo by Amanda Slater via flickr.com, snowgum bark.