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ORGANIC LIFE
M
y earliest memory of eating from a garden –
of someone clever enough to grow food – was
the garden belonging to my grandmother’s
brother. A flower farmer, turned chicken farmer, turned
home gardener, his vegetable patch was outside the
kitchen. I remember beans, tomatoes and sugar snap
peas. I remember running my hands over the silky
threads of fresh corn cobs.
His commercial glasshouse stood a couple of hundred
metres down the hill from the house. Once, it had been
filled with flowers but now stood empty. Life had been
pared back to the essentials: to flowers that could be
seen through the window, to fresh vegetables and cool,
sharp rainwater cupped in a metal tank.
Later on, I ate herbs from my father’s garden and
quinces and figs from my grandmother’s. Our family farm
- used for beef cattle and then agistment – had a little
vegetable plot wedged in near the holding yards. I’m sure
it grew many things, but all I can remember is the crunch
of gritty silverbeet. For me, gardening is entrenched with
the idea of food and family. With the idea of home.
A gardening community
On a dreary winter’s day in the valley, the owner of our
local post office gives me a bag of artichokes, dug freshly
from his garden. We had talked about it months ago
as I sent off a package – how I’d never grown them but
wanted to. And here they were; washed and carefully
packed; waiting for me. He had remembered.
I have seeds, succulents, flowers, fig trees and grape
vines gifted to me from the gardens of friends and family.
Whenever I catch up with someone, I try to bring a little
piece of our garden as a gift: flowers or marmalade, herbs
or a basket of zucchinis. I talk to my friends who are
selling their produce in a weekly farm gate stall. They do
not need to do it; they sell their produce (more lucratively)
to many of Melbourne’s top restaurants. Yet, each
Saturday they pick and wash and set out their produce.
They want to connect with their community; they want
to help people to engage with new and unusual produce.
They are patient and generous with their customers;
explaining how to grow and eat whatever is on offer.
They will give advice on how people might grow their
own. They want to give back to the community and to
make friends; to find a place in this landscape that is,
in so many ways, still unknown to them.
Not everyone has grown up with a garden or in
communities where people have abundance (of
anything) and are willing or able to share it. Growing
things simply and seasonally is not a skill that is as
common as it vitally needs to be. It’s so important to
share knowledge, to teach people how to grow things and
cook things and how to support local growers. To share
plants, to give cuttings, seedlings and seeds to people who
will nourish and care for them. To share food and flowers
and greenery and give away both excess and things that
are treasured to friends, to family, to strangers. This is how
communities are built and strengthened. This is how the
skills of gardening can be collectively reclaimed.The earth beneath our feet
Gardening can so easily become ingrained within us. We
carry forward those sunlit, dreamy moments of picking
something that has sprung from the earth beneath our
feet. It can thread us to our families and our histories- keeping us connected to where we’ve been.
Growing plants – and particularly food – is home. It is
the earth where we sleep and love and fight and laugh
and where we eat (always eat). It is cooking and family
recipes. It is the family legend of that time grandma
accidentally made a garlic cake instead of ginger; the
time the home brewed plum wine exploded; the year
that the tomatoes self-seeded all over the garden and the
other year when there were no tomatoes, at all. Growing
food and sharing it with those we love is home. It can
also knit us into whatever community we find ourselves
in; tapping into the people and the place itself; the
winds and rains and soil.
My baby spends long hours strapped to me as
I garden. He reaches for leaves and flowers; stuffing them
into his mouth if I’m not quick enough to take them off
him. He likes rosemary and lemon balm. He likes mint
and calendula. He also seems to have a particular
penchant for the taste of dirt. He will grow up knowing
how to grow things; cook things; share things. I hope
that he takes these lessons with him into adulthood.
And I hope, when he thinks back to his childhood,
that the memories of it will be shaded with green.
Eliza Henry-Jones is a novelist who lives on a small farm in
Victoria’s Yarra Valley. Her novels are In the Quiet (2015),
Ache (2017) and the young adult novel P is for Pearl (2018).