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.

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.

Amid all last week’s hub-bub about asylum seeker policies, Spanish football, State of Origin football and footballers reacting badly to sleeping tablets, you might have missed a mysterious little news item about an act of horticultural sabotage in north Queensland. Around seven million plants, including four million tomato seedlings, have been killed after they were deliberately poisoned at a seedling nursery in Bowen.

Police believe herbicide was injected into the nursery’s irrigation system, and the rumours are flying. Some say the poisoning was an act of industrial sabotage. Some suggest that another grower was trying to force up tomato prices. Others are even claiming the poisoning was an act of terrorism.

Whatever the motive, the repercussions from this event are obvious. Bowen is the largest winter growing tomato region in Australia, harvesting 80% of the nation’s crop during spring. The loss of millions of seedlings means that if you were planning to make chicken parmigiana sometime in September, one of the main ingredients just got a whole lot more expensive. Prices are expected to triple over the coming months and reach in excess of $15 per kilo.

The loss of a crop is a devastating blow for any farmer, and I wouldn’t wish such an event on anyone. It’s also a serious blow for farm labourers and nursery workers who’ll need to look elsewhere for a job. But while this event is a difficult pill to swallow for those directly involved, I also think it can serve as a timely reminder of the problems associated with the industrial model of food production, and the urgent need for us to get back to basics.

Some of the issues are immediately obvious. Throughout southern Australia tomatoes are a summer crop. However in our society’s desire to have whatever food it wants, whenever it wants it, we’ve largely abandoned the time honoured practice of eating whatever produce is currently in season. Instead, we either eat processed food when fresh produce isn’t available, or worse still, import produce from overseas. In the case of winter tomatoes, we don’t seem to have any qualms about transporting produce via fossil fuel powered vehicles across thousands of kilometres, a process associated with the concept of “food miles”.

Less obvious in the Bowen tomato sabotage is the issue of food security. Unlike our ancestors, who grew fruit and vegetables and kept backyard livestock, we find ourselves in a position of extreme vulnerability when it comes to food supplies. Almost every household is dependent upon supermarkets, but to minimise inventory sitting idly in warehouses, the supermarkets operate according to a “just in time” delivery system. It’s estimated that there is just three day’s supply of food actually stocked on the shelves.

When demand exceeds supply, fresh produce prices go up. But when calamity strikes, prices skyrocket to unaffordable levels. This happened following Cyclone Larry when a large portion of North Queensland’s banana crop was wiped out, and it will happen as a result of the Bowen tomato poisoning.

The solution to the issues of food security, dependence upon supermarkets and long distance transportation, is simple. It’s also affordable, and empowering. It builds community. It leads to improvements in physical and mental wellbeing. It is, of course, to grow your own food, right in your own garden.

I’ve been growing my own fruit, vegetables and herbs since Kylie and I got married in 1998. Twelve years later and we reckon that in summer, our garden supplies about 80 percent of our fresh produce requirement. Supermarkets are still a necessary evil. But we seek to make up some of the shortfall by swapping with neighbours and buying things locally. We’re not aiming for total self sufficiency, but we are determined to grow as much as possible.

There’s more to it than pure economics though. Something I’ve realised in the last year or two is that alongside my wife and kids, food growing is one of the great passions of my life. When I’m outside digging in my vegie garden or working in the orchard, I experience the kind of deep, pit of your guts satisfaction that comes from directly suppling my family’s need for food.

If I could turn the clock on my gardening efforts back to 1998, I’d only change one thing. I’d plant more fruit trees. That’s it. Growing my own food has been one of the best things I’ve done in my life to date, and I’d encourage you too, to take up the spade, align yourself with the seasons and bring forth from the soil a bounty richer than you have ever imagined!

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 18th July, 2010.

Conifer. As one of the very few plants that I have a love/hate relationship with, the very word is full of mixed emotions for me. On the one hand, I find conifers beautifully evocative plants that can conjure up romantic images of Tuscan villas and alpine forests. The reverie lasts until I drive through a 1960’s Toowoomba subdivision and struggle to appreciate an endless parade of front gardens filled with little other than dwarf or clipped conifers. In this situation they look more like a nineteenth century funeral procession – stoic, dour, sombre.

What a shame we got such wonderful plants so badly wrong. Conifers have many overlooked virtues. They are supremely tough plants, thanks largely to their needle like foliage which limits moisture loss and resists drying winds. Many conifers are remarkably free from disease, and are little troubled by insect pests. They are some of the most widely distributed plants on earth, able to survive in all but the harshest climates and found on every continent.

From a garden design point of view, another virtue is their pyramidal or columnar growth patterns. Few plants have such a strikingly defined shape, which means that conifers are the perfect trees for situations requiring bold planting. The Italians got it right. They used fastigiate (upright) cypresses to strongly define entrances, line avenues, frame views and emphasise vertical elements like walls. In Aussie suburbia we’ve done weird things like give tall growing conifers “flat top” haircuts, or tie wires around the tree to constrict the foliage. Surely we’d be much better off working with a plant’s natural inclinations, or planting an alternative.

Though only about 600 species occur in the wild, there are literally hundreds of different conifers to choose from in cultivation. Some make the perfect, low maintenance groundcover, such as shore juniper, Juniperus conferta. Others make an excellent farm windbreak, such as Bhutan cypress, Cupressus torulosa. Other conifers produce edible nuts such as Pinus pinea, and lots make stunning specimen trees, such as the weeping Atlantic cedar, Cedrus atlantica ‘Glauca Pendula’.

Conifers range from dwarf shrubs less than a metre in height to 100 metre tall giants. Bearing this in mind, it almost goes without saying that wisdom should be exercised when choosing from such a diverse array of plants. My advice is to do some research. Use discretion. Don’t stick a Dawn Redwood in your courtyard, be careful in how you use gold and blue coloured conifers, and above all, try to avoid the “miniature Switzerland look”.

Gardens filled with little other than conifers became wildly popular during the suburban expansion of the 60’s and 70’s, particularly in highland areas like Toowoomba, where the reasoning seemed to be “mountain climate equals mountainesque landscaping”. To some extent this is correct, but Toowoomba is hardly the Swiss Alps. If you’re a collector, you’ll probably want to plant conifers like there’s no tomorrow, but most home gardeners will fare better with a mixed garden containing a range of different plants.

We shouldn’t overlook Australia’s native conifers either. I have a real soft spot for the Araucaria “pines” and their relatives. You only need to take a drive from the Bunya Mountains to Toowoomba via the New England Highway to realise that big, ancient trees like Araucaria bidwillii (Bunya pine), Araucaria cunninghamii (Hoop pine) and Agathis robusta (Kauri pine) thrive in the red soil country along the escarpment.

These stately conifers were once quite a common sight in suburban gardens throughout Toowoomba, but our modern obsession with health and safety has seen lots of domestic trees removed. I grew up with a massive Bunya pine in the backyard, so it always makes me a bit sad to see an arborist dangling from the top of a 20 metre tall specimen wielding a chainsaw. Lest a Bunya nut lands on someone’s head, another big old beauty bites the dust.

Well, stuff health and safety! Council will probably get their knickers in a knot but I say where there’s space, bring back the big native conifers. Not only did they provide welcome shade in a city rapidly looking like a tin roof jungle, but the old Bunyas, hoops and kauris helped define Toowoomba’s treasured Garden City identity. Let’s not forget how unique the Bunya is to our corner of the world. I think it should be celebrated as one of the city’s icons, and I’d love to see it planted appropriately, but happily, by all and sundry.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 10th July 2010. Photo by Justin Russell, “Blue Fir” Glenrock, Tenterfield.

One of the most frustrating things about being a gardening journalist, is that there is usually no other option but to provide generalised advice to a widely distributed audience. Take my website as an example. In response to an article written last year on rhubarb, there are three pages of comments left by readers from all over the world, often asking questions of a similar nature. “Why won’t my rhubarb go red” is popular. So is “why are the stalks of my rhubarb so skinny?”

Such is the gardening journalist’s lot. I don’t profess to be a font of all horticultural wisdom, but I have gained some hard won experience, and I like to write about what I’ve learned. I genuinely want to helpful. But I ask you this: How on earth is it possible to offer specific advice to gardeners living in locations as far flung as England, America and good ol’ Toowoomba? By necessity, the advice has to be generic.

But here lies the problem. Gardening is never generic. In fact it is the opposite. It’s always local and individual. It is specific, and subject to the influences of climate, weather, latitude, and geography. This means that in gardening terms, experience is mostly about developing an intimate relationship with a single place over a reasonable period of time.

My favourite gardening writer, Monty Don, once described his idea of home as knowing which kitchen drawer he should open to find the string and scissors. In other words, home is about becoming intimately acquainted with a place and its people. The same is absolutely true of gardening.

For me, getting acquainted with my place means a few things. For starters, it means living long enough in one place to sink really deep roots. Then it means observing and recording things like weather and changes to long term climate patterns. It means getting to know the culture and history of my land and the broader landscape it’s part of. And of course, it means getting to know the geology and geography of the land, especially the soil. I suppose you might say that it means being sensitive to a place, responsive.

But there’s more to it than that. Every parcel of land, whether it is 10,000 acres or just 1000 square metres, a national park or town centre, has a particular spirit. I don’t mean some kind of magical power, but rather an atmosphere or mood that’s unique to a particular location.

The Romans called this atmosphere “genius loci”, the spirit of the place. Alexander Pope, the 18^th century poet, wrote “consult the genius of the place in all”, and his advice is still one of the guiding principles for designers of buildings and landscapes. Those who are familiar with Glenn Murcutt’s houses will know that the Pritzker Prize winning architect works according to a philosophy of “touching the earth lightly” and matching the building to the landscape. Prominent English garden designer Dan Pearson is similarly renowned for being able to capture the spirit of a particular place in his designs.

A local garden that epitomises the spirit of a place is Vineyard Cottages on the Granite Belt. Here, the owners have used granite stones for edges, decomposed granite for pathways, and plants that reflect the culture of the area. Apples, grapes and lavenders all serve as reminders of Ballandean’s local farming traditions. Local mushroom compost was used to improve the poor soil in the garden and the owners even went as far as matching the trim colour on the cottages to the hazy blue shade of the distant hills. The effect of such thoughtfulness is that a stroll through the garden leaves no room for error – this is a garden that is a good fit with its locality. The genius of the place is distinctive, and celebrated.

In complete contrast was a Toowoomba estate I drove through the other day to visit friends. Despite having been built over excellent soil and surrounded by tall eucalypts, every second front garden consisted of a lawn, a couple of purple cordylines and perhaps a clump of dietes or a murraya hedge. There was no distinctiveness whatsoever. I could have been driving through any new estate in Australia, such was the denial of place.

Here’s what I’d rather do: rejoice in the things that make my little corner of the world unique. I want to apply my local knowledge to the way I grow commonly available plants, like rhubarb. I know that in my free draining soil, it needs daily watering in summer, and plenty of top dressing with compost each winter. In your garden, it’ll be a different story. Find the genius of your place. Y filltir sgwâr. In Welsh, that means “your square mile”. Celebrate its distinctiveness.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 3rd July 2010. Photo by Justin Russell, Vineyard Cottages, Ballandean.

One of the more interesting questions I’ve received from a reader was a simple, one line note that read “From which direction does the frost come?”. On first glance I wondered whether it was a riddle or an odd joke. Did the answer have something to do with the magnetism of the earth or was it simply such a weird thing to ask that I ought to check the envelope for white powder before replying just as succinctly, “The Right”?

Then I stopped fooling around and actually thought about the question. Does frost come from a direction? It’s a fair enough thing to ask, and the answer, strangely enough, is both yes and no. Let me explain.

Whenever I’m asked to describe frost, I suggest that it’s the result of very cold air that behaves similar to a mass of treacle or honey moving across the landscape. There’s no way, of course, that frost comes from a point on the compass, and when I say it comes from The Right, I’m only having a lend. Besides, “frost” is only the visible ice crystals that form as a result of moisture being frozen by cold air, not the air itself. But when the reader’s question is taken literally, the answer is also literal.

Think about it. Cold air is denser than warm air. On clear, still nights during winter, warm air radiates away into the atmosphere, but the heavier, colder air descends and pools at ground level. It rolls down hills. Settles in hollows. Gets trapped against the base of walls and hedges. So, from which direction does the frost come? The answer’s clear: from above.

Now, for the heavenly minded among you, take heed. When I say “from above”, you shouldn’t get too excited. I’ve learnt from bitter experience that frost can wreak havoc in a poorly planned garden, causing one to hurl curses in the direction of hell. My garden experienced an ugly “black frost” in 2007 that saw the temperature drop to about minus ten. It froze the pipes solid for two days and burnt the foliage on 10 metre tall trees as effectively as the fires of Hades itself.

These days, I record every frost the garden experiences. I mark the date of the first and last frosts for the season, watch the weather forecast like a hawk, and measure the minimum temperature each night. I used to record all the details in my diary, but now it all goes into a notebook, alongside details about wind, rainfall and other tidbits about the garden.

This info has come in really handy. I know that our first frost can occur as early as Anzac Day, and the last can be as late as October. Summer vegies get planted later than they did in my Toowoomba garden as a result. I also know that we generally get about 40 frosts per year, about 20-30 of which are light (zero to minus three degrees), 10 are moderate (minus three to five) and a small number of which I categorise as heavy (lower than minus five). I figure that gardening has lots in common with farming, and no farmer worth his or her cabbages would be ignorant to the details of climate and weather.

All this talk about Hades and frost damage might give the impression that frost is some kind of malignant force. Sorry if I’ve given you the wrong impression. Now that I’ve learnt to choose hardy plants, I actually love frost. I welcome its arrival and mourn its passing. Why? The benefits of a good frost far outweigh any problems it might cause.

For one, there is the potential for pest control. A heavy frost is cold enough to kill some fungal spores, insect eggs, overwintering insects and even rodents, so it breaks the pest cycle better than any chemical. A good frost can also freeze moisture in the soil, helping to make it more workable.

And then, there is beauty. Find me a gardener hasn’t stood shivering but transfixed in the thin dawn light, taking in the sheer wonder of their otherwise boring garden transformed into a fantasy land of twinkling ice crystals. You know I’m not a raving fan of formal hedges and topiaries, but I am prepared to admit that nothing looks better on a frosty morning.

For what it’s worth, here’s my advice: use formal features judiciously when planning your garden, and spend the odd winter afternoon keeping them nicely trimmed. Then head inside, put a fresh log on the fire and pray that the morning brings temperatures below freezing point. Finally, the best advice of all: when dawn breaks, head outside in your bare feet, inhale deeply, and marvel at the wonder of frozen dew. Maybe frost does come from above, after all.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 5th June 2010. Photo courtesy Granite Belt Wine and Tourism Inc.

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.

All over the world the line between gardening and farming is rapidly being blurred. In the so called “rust-belt” of the United States, which includes declining industrial icons like Detroit and Pittsburgh, suburban wastelands full of derelict houses are being reclaimed for use as miniature farms. In debt stricken Los Angeles, micro farming businesses utilising rented backyards are springing up like California Poppies.

In the UK, an innovative scheme called Landshare brings together people with a plot of land to spare with those who want to grow their own food but have nowhere to do it. The project has got off to a flying start since launching last year. More than 47,000 members have joined the scheme, with back gardens, church yards, rural plots and even pub gardens being snapped up by land-sharers as soon as they become available. The UK’s National Trust has seen value in the scheme and has pledged to make available 1000 growing plots.

Even here in Toowoomba, a growing band of suburban gardeners are replacing ornamentals with edibles. At Gardenfest last weekend I got chatting with an experienced gardener about his interest in producing organic food. So keen is the bloke that he’s removed most of his rare plant collection, and is filling his 800sqm block with fruit trees and vegies.

This is all exciting stuff for a keen home grower like me to witness. I can’t help but think that finally, after decades spent filling gardening books with ornamentals and relegating fruit and vegies to the appendix, we’re starting to get the message that land is a precious resource, best used productively. I’m hopeful that we’re over the false notion that crops are grown on farms and gardens are made for the dual purpose of boosting property values, and making us feel warm and fuzzy.

Historically, the lines between gardening and agriculture have been unequivocally blurry. Right up until the boom period following World War II, and for a while thereafter, small, private gardens the world over were full of fruit, vegies, chooks and flowers all happily coexisting alongside kids playing summer games under the sprinkler. In a sense, everyone farmed. Just about every garden was productive. Then along came rising incomes. Cheap food produced using cheap energy flooded supermarkets, and with it came the perception that home grown food was something done in the Third World, not a prosperous country like Australia. Fruit trees were cut down and vegie patches became archaeological relics lost under a landscape of turf and conifers. Or worse. How many productive gardens have been lost to the frivolity of plunge pools and outdoor kitchens?

But cheap energy is now nostalgia. The fiasco unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico should remind us of what we all learned in basic primary school science: fossil fuels are finite, and logic suggests that if we use up enough of them, one day they’ll run out. What’s going to fuel the combine harvesters then? Where will farmers grow food when nigh on all the productive farmland has been lost to open cut coal mines and salt water spewing gas wells? We might be able to power the odd car and lightbulb, but how will we fuel our bodies?

The answer is right under our noses! It’s already arrived. Millions of gardeners have already turned the ornamental garden over to backyard food production, and guess what – the outdoor kitchen was never as useful as the indoor one and the plunge pool was useless in winter! Plus, as a bonus, it turns out that the edible garden looks just as pretty as the “ornamental” garden but is far more satisfying.

The word “agriculture” is derived from two Latin words – ager, meaning field, and cultura meaning cultivation. Taken literally, agriculture means “cultivation of a field”. Whether that field is the size of cricket oval or just a courtyard, if you’ve made up you’re mind to cultivate it, you’re engaged in agriculture. If that cultivation produces edible crops, as far as I’m concerned, you’re farming.

In the current issue, Time magazine has named its annual top 100 list of people who most affect the world. Alongside household names like Barack Obama, Sachin Tendulkar and Lady Gaga is Will Allen, a 62-year-old African American, six-foot-seven-inches tall former professional basketball player. Allen is an urban farmer. From a two-acre site in a poor Milwaukee neighbourhood, he produces a quarter of a million dollars worth of food that helps feed 10,000 people. Allen’s Growing Power foundation teaches people how to grow their own, and works on the motto “Grow. Bloom. Thrive.” Sounds like a pretty decent idea to me. What about you?

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle, 8th May 2010. Photo by Justin Russell – “Spring Vegies”.

Have you ever stopped to watch a field of tall grass billowing in the breeze? I did it for the first time the other day, and it was a mesmerising, almost mystical sight. I was in the middle of another task at the time – watering some pot plants – when out of the corner of my eye an invisible wave rolled across the surface of a neighbour’s field, crested, and then broke against a beach of freshly ploughed ground like a wave breaking upon the shore. I stood and watched for another 10 minutes or so, transfixed, then raced inside to tell my wife the good news.

When my little family first moved to the country four years ago, our nearest neighbour told me about the old days at Hampton when rainfall was so plentiful, the grass grew as tall as the fences. Considering the paddock next door was bare dirt when we moved, I was sceptical. But this is the year. The rains have been generous and the grass is almost to the top wire.

Conditions have to be just right for the billowing effect to occur. It goes without saying that a field billows best, but the grass in the field must be tall, fine, and flexible. Then there’s the breeze. It can’t be too strong. Gentle and lilting is about right, with the odd gust rolling through to generate a crescendo. Add a dipping afternoon sun to create depth and texture, and you’ve got a scene fit to inspire Wordsworth himself.

Unless your backyard is a paddock, it’s hard to create a scene like this at home. But you can learn from it. While watching the grasses billow, I reflected on the lack of movement in formal-style gardens, which are all clipped hedges and clean lines with not a leaf out of place. Like a prim headmistress, they are static and funereal, all hair-in-a-bun and stockinged legs. But gardens needn’t be dour. They should touch the senses and refresh the spirit. In other words they should be poetic, and one of the best ways of creating poetry is by making the garden dynamic.

There are a couple of ways to do this. One is by embracing seasonal change. Formal, tightly clipped gardens avoid change by deliberately looking the same almost every month of the year. In contrast, dynamic gardens ebb and flow. They welcome the approach of winter and they celebrate the arrival of spring. Formal gardens are like monuments, frozen in time. Dynamic gardens are responsive.

The second way to create a sense of dynamism, is to choose plants that literally sway in the breeze. In the light of my “field of billowing grasses” experience, it should come as little surprise that my favourite plants for creating movement in the garden are ornamental grasses. They might be more refined than their wild, paddock dwelling cousins, but nothing beats them for catching the slightest puff of wind.

Any tall, flexible, fine leaved grass will do the job. But if you’re going to make a special effort, I’d recommend going for the best, and grasses don’t get any better than the various cultivars of Miscanthus sinensis. They’re tough, non-invasive, low maintenance, and most importantly, extremely graceful.

My favourite is an old variety called Miscanthus ‘Gracillimus’. It forms a beautiful vase shaped clump to around 1.8m tall, and produces lovely silver seed heads that catch the autumn sunlight. As a bonus, the foliage assumes tones of rust and copper during winter, with colours becoming more intense as the weather cools. Maintenance is simple. When green shoots appear in spring, simply cut the entire clump back to about 20cm from ground level with hedge shears or a whipper snipper.

Some other large Miscanthus cultivars of note include ‘Zebrinus’, which has lime green foliage marked with yellow bandings, and ‘Flamingo’, a tall grower that produces elegant swan necked flower heads that stand proudly above the leaves. ‘Silberfeder’ is another beauty renowned for its deliciously cool silver flowers. If space is limited, try ‘Eileen Quinn’, which reaches just 60cm tall and is wonderful planted as a drift, or the German cultivar ‘Kleine Fontaine’ (little fountain), which reaches a height of 70cm.

These selections are just the tip of the iceberg, so my advice is to experiment. If you’re keen to plant a suburban meadow, why not. If you’ve got space for just a single plant to catch the breeze, then that’s okay as well. Just do a quick check for potential weediness (remember my Mexican feather grass experience from a couple of years ago) and who knows – you might be inspired to pen a couple of lines in praise of billowing grasses too.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 1st May, 2010. Photo by Justin Russell – Miscanthus ‘Gracillimus’