Hannah visits a couple who moved to Tassie to set up their dream homestead. Subscribe 🔔 ab.co/GA-subscribe
Nick Ritar and Kirsten Bradley featured on Gardening Australia in 2020 when they were living on Melliodora, the showpiece property set up by permaculture guru David Holmgren.
Nick explains permaculture as a way of reconnecting with ‘place’; where your food and water comes from and where your waste products go, and the ecosystem around you.
The principles of permaculture are reflected in the layout of their garden, maximizing the benefits of sunlight and small microclimates, and planning the layout to benefit each individual component.
Kirsten points out the flow from the sunny perennial border and rockery down the slope to productive vegetable beds, fruit trees, a pond and chicken house.
While it looks flowing and organic, it is very carefully planned. Nick says finding flat areas down the slope helped them divide the space up in a logical way.
There are huge rocks sourced from nearby that helped create steps down the block as well as creating habitat and providing thermal mass.
The seven vegie beds are all the same size so infrastructure such as irrigation and shade structures fit on all of them. They also use a lot of temporary trellising that can be moved around to provide a quick crop of snow peas or beans then removed to allow more light onto slower-growing crops. Having so many beds allows easy crop rotation, too, so one bed can always be under green manure.
Berries are grown on an arbour, with an understorey of herbs and ornamentals.
There’s a small edible forest garden too, with fruit trees, ground covers and mid-storey plants that offer food for the household as well as feeding insects, birds, and the soil.
Filmed in Cygnet, Tas.
Featured plants:
Carrot (Daucus carota cv.)
Snow pea (Lathyrus oleraceus cv.)
Raspberry (Rubus cv.)
Mint (Mentha cv.)
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