Bernice Shepherd
The sun is shining, the soil is warming and gardeners everywhere are keen to get out and start their spring planting.
I talked to four locals to see what they are doing in their gardens this spring.
Vicki Peckover recently moved back to Casino and found the perfect house, but with a very small garden. With chooks, quails and a pet bunny out the back, she has put her vegetable beds in the front yard. She even has a tiny worm farm out there.
“I have to use every inch of space I’ve got,” she said.
Vicki’s friend Jeffery is responsible for the splendid raised beds constructed from timber. “He is the gardener – he gives me lots of tips.”
They are just finishing a crop of bok choi and broccoli, with carrots and beetroot almost ready for harvest. Now she is putting in pumpkin, watermelon and tomatoes ready for summer–autumn, with peas and cucumber right next to the fence so they can climb up it.
Vicki said she harvests something almost every day and growing her own veg has made a big difference to her grocery bills.
Sandra Condon is new to gardening. Four years ago she and her husband Arthur moved from a property in Stanthorpe where he tended large vegetable and flower gardens.
“Arthur was a great gardener, he took after his parents and grandparents – in the days when you couldn’t just buy everything, they grew it all. I loved being able to go out and pick things and eat them or pick them and put them in a vase,” she said.
They had to move from the property when Arthur developed dementia and couldn’t look after it any more. He soon needed full-time care and, since moving into a nursing home, Sandra has found herself needing to keep on top of things.
She reckons she doesn’t know much about gardening; “I put something in, cross my fingers and hope for the best!”
But the pot plants and decorative touches everywhere are evidence that she has a knack for creating beauty.
This spring Sandra has been mulching and planting native shrubs and climbers to hide the fence. She says the old screen doors have made great trellises.
She says you can find some great bargains at garage sales and recently found some planters containing sad-looking begonias, just in need of a trim and a feed.
I asked how she likes her new activity and Sandra said, “I rather like it. It’s actually really good exercise.”
Les Wilkes moved into his house a couple of years ago and was confronted with a very overgrown backyard and lots of concrete. After a lot of clearing, tidying and planting he has created a very productive garden.
He says there were already some orange and lemon trees in desperate need of some TLC, but he was keen to plant more fruit trees, “You can grow anything in this climate so I might as well grow something I can eat.”
At the side of the house he has avocados, guavas, lychees, figs and mulberries.
In the back he has added limes, tangelos, blood oranges, blackberries and grapes.
He says his greatest success has been the banana and papaya bed. Over several months he filled a large, empty in-ground fish pond with prunings and anything compostable, topped it up with garden soil and planted banana and papaya into it.
They are now so huge they shade much of the back, creating a cool shady spot in summer where once it was blistering hot cement.
“In a little over a year I’ve already had one bunch of bananas and now I have another two coming along,” Les said.
Tracey Mickley is a new arrival to Casino after her home in South Lismore was destroyed in the flood.
“Living in Casino has been really healing for me,” she said.
After losing her beautiful productive garden in Lismore, being able to get out in the garden again has been an essential part of her recovery.
She moved into a house where there were fruit trees and native plants, so she has used the spaces between them. She has also made great use of pots, planting them up with produce as soon as she could.
A salad and green smoothie fanatic, Tracey’s first choices were peas, snow peas, silverbeet, spinach, rocket and parsley and there is now an abundance of all these – enough to share the snow peas with the king parrots.
This spring she is trying bush cucumbers. Being a bush rather than a vine, they don’t take up as much space.
“I can’t wait for my summer veg to be up!”
