Visit Kate 29 September 2013

On Sunday 29 September 2013 we visited Kate Flint's food-garden at Cygnet

Kate did not intend to buy a property when she visited Tasmania in 2010, but when she saw the place where she now lives near the township of Cygnet, it took very little to persuade her to move to Tasmania.

When she welcomed us, Kate told us that shortly after she moved in she found a little sign in the garden saying 'As is the garden, so is the gardener'. Now, three years later, Kate feels the garden is beginning to reflect who she is.

Kate welcomes everyone

This food-garden visit was a bit different because it was the first time that our group met another group. Cygnet group SeedSaveUs operates very similarly to us. Kate had decided that, because we did the travelling, they would provide morning tea, and the food was wonderful. We hope to return the favour when we invite SeedSaveUs to one of our food-garden visits.

What really stood out was that we had so many people here from all over Southern Tasmania and all were very generously sharing their knowledge, ideas, produce, seeds, plants and food. It made for a wonderful community event.

People brought two tables full of produce, food, seeds and plants

Kate took us around her extensive food-garden and explained that a lot of it is self-sown by allowing many vegetables to go to seed. Sometimes a plant is moved, but quite often things are allowed to grow in the spot they themselves have chosen. The result is an eclectic mix of vegetables all around the garden. Some plants stood out:

Native Tasmanian Thyme (Ozothamnus obcordatus)

Cardoon: you eat the leave stalks which have an Artichoke-like flavour

In the backyard was a large very happy Lady In the Snow heirloom apple tree, that clearly had been there for decades and that produces tons of fruit every year. Sorry, forgot to take a photo of that one.

The arcs are there because Kate sometimes covers parts of this bed

This first meeting of SeedSavUs and the Food Garden Group was a real success, also because so many of our members made the trip to Cygnet. Many thanks to everyone and listening to a few of the comments afterwards, I think we all had a great time.

Many thanks to Kate and SeedSaveUs members. It was much appreciated.

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