Visit Aimee 15 October 2017

On Sunday 15 October the Food Garden Group visited Aimee's garden at New Town:

Just over a year ago Aimee's garden looked like this:

In the photo below you see in the top corner the same roofing separator as the photo above shows. The difference is amazing, and the result of a drastic re-design of the garden, from one that had a lot of high-maintenance veggie beds to one where herbs and flowers are much more prominent.

Only the top end of the garden (photo below) still has conventional veggie beds, but here too (edible) herbs and flowers are now much more dominant. We found many rhubarb bushes because partner Greg needs a lot of rhubarb for his veggie boxes business. There are plenty of Wormwood bushes as well. They come in handy in the chook house where they keep mites away.

In the photo below Aimee (white shirt) and partner Greg (in the left top corner) welcomed us. Aimee explained how she was forced to re-think her food garden when she found that her busy life made it impossible to sustain a more conventional food garden.

But the chooks are still there and Aimee very enthusiastically answered all the questions that our members who have chooks asked her. Aimee does not just collect eggs. She also has begun raising chickens at the request of her daughter.

Here we see inside Aimee's very cute hexagonal hothouse:

For most of the year there is a bee hive in the garden and Aimee and Greg collect a lot of honey.

In the photo Aimee holds up a frame full with honey and they generously shared pieces of honeycomb with us. People were very interested in hearing about bee-keeping, and it brought some of us closer to deciding to do the same in our garden.

People brought a wonderful selection of plants, produce and seeds for the produce table, and morning tea was also delicious.

These food garden visits are such a wonderful melting pot of images, smells, impressions, questions, information and ideas. They are a great way to learn and to get inspired, and meet with a great group of food gardeners.

Many thanks to Aimee and Greg for hosting this very interesting visit, and thanks everyone who came for their enthusiasm, produce and contributions to morning tea. Next month we will gladly do it all again, in an entirely different food garden setting.

This text was previously published on the Food Garden Group blog. It was written by Max Bee.