As wonderful as the rain has been the Pink Gumboot Project is looking a little – let’s say soggy this month. So we are bringing you a story on someone else’s garden, while it dries out – and hopefully by next month we’ll have some new veggies and photos to show you our progress.

Raised beds.

People can be over-whelmed at the prospect of gardening organically, or the concepts of permaculture and biodynamics, but for the last 20 years John de Vere has presided over a most logical and productive garden that demonstrates all the best principles of gardening, as well as the simplicity of good design and management. 

John believes environment and food are the chief elements in human health.

The garden is laid out on permacultural principles which he describes as the spatial side of the design of an intelligent layout.

Looking at it, it seems the definition of intelligent comes full–circle in that it is absolutely simple.

“As with the principles of the Bill Mollinson book, Permaculture, we have kept the things you need most frequently as close to the house as possible.

“So the herbs are the first thing you come to. Then you come to the raised beds, which all look rather bare because we have only just started planting our winter crops.

“They are ‘no-dig’ beds – when I built them I filled them with manure, covered in wet newspaper then popped soil on top of that.

“The manure attracts the worms which rise up to eat the newspaper, and bingo – instant veggie beds.”

Alongside the veggie beds were a number of fruit bushes – a thornless blackberry and lots of raspberries, thriving in the hard valley frosts.

The chooks are kept in the orchard adjacent, to be separated from the gardens.

A chicken palace.

However in a further example of logic there is access to the chook shed from inside the garden.

So they can be fed, and eggs collected in between garden chores.

“Wonderful things chooks – they fertilise the trees, eat all the Codling moth and give eggs into the bargain.”

There are no hard and fast rules to the concepts of Permaculture.

Innovation and reusing materials are perhaps the foundations as well as using tried and trusted methods.

John is very attached to his Suttons Compost Tumbler for example.

This not-so-cheap device looks like a 44 gallon drum lying on its side.

It gets filled with a very precise ratio of woodshavings, chook and/or cow manure and grass clippings.

Over the next two weeks it is rotated regularly allowing the heat to disperse evenly.

“Its not unlike a big cooker – it accelerates the processes, and all the nutrients stay within.

“At the end I simply open the hatch and pour out a good three barrow loads of compost. The remainder of our rubbish is disposed of appropriately – chooks get the veggie scraps, shared with the worm-farm, our dogs get the meat, and I think the only thing that has to go out is the plastic.

“Our impact on the environment is as low as we can practically get it.”

Living rurally gives one such a marvellous opportunity to learn.

A lot of people come to lifestyle blocks and spend most of their lives in heavy traffic getting to their corporate jobs.

“You have to be more flexible, and for my wife and I our time here has meant such a wonderful period of learning, which is something we should never stop doing.

“It is very satisfying when people share their knowledge and problems locally, and so frequently a neighbour will have a solution, such as a lack

of minerals when something isn’t growing.

“When we first got here I put superphosphate onto our paddocks, but after a bit of research I realised that under that wonderful lush green grass, the micro-organisms in the top four inches had all been killed.

“What use is a pasture without worms? I only put on lime now!”