Collecting mulch from Petone foreshore today, I met a lady who said that she'd been collecting it for years and putting it on her garden - it was brilliant, she said. Especially good for camellias. She'd just sold her house, so was glad that today that she could walk on by and think "Oh, I don't need to get that anymore."
She'd done her garden all organically, and she hoped the young woman who'd bought the house would appreciate it and keep her garden going.
I told her I was a very aspirational, erratic gardener - every year wanting to plan and do things properly. She said in return that that's what gardening was all about - it's a teaching thing. You learn about life. You experiment.
The biggest buzz I get out of gardening is finding useful things to feed it or embellish: the hunter gatherer thing: like mulch from the sea, or a tyre washed up on the beach: that started me on using tyres for growing things. I've just had two potatoes sprout up of their own accord in tyre columns from last year that had potatoes in it - where I obviously did not gather all.
That reminds me of the other biggest buzz I get from gardening: the accidental, when things spring up self-sown and unexpectedly. It's probably the better way, just let things grow up naturally.
She'd done her garden all organically, and she hoped the young woman who'd bought the house would appreciate it and keep her garden going.
I told her I was a very aspirational, erratic gardener - every year wanting to plan and do things properly. She said in return that that's what gardening was all about - it's a teaching thing. You learn about life. You experiment.
The biggest buzz I get out of gardening is finding useful things to feed it or embellish: the hunter gatherer thing: like mulch from the sea, or a tyre washed up on the beach: that started me on using tyres for growing things. I've just had two potatoes sprout up of their own accord in tyre columns from last year that had potatoes in it - where I obviously did not gather all.
That reminds me of the other biggest buzz I get from gardening: the accidental, when things spring up self-sown and unexpectedly. It's probably the better way, just let things grow up naturally.
