Touring a productive edible garden in a rental house | Garden Inspiration | Gardening Australia

For many gardeners, living in a rental home can really put a dampener on garden dreams, but for young horticulturist, Brooklyn Mabbot, her rental backyard has been a gateway to living out her food production and community building ambitions. Subscribe 🔔 http://ab.co/GA-subscribe
Sophie Thomson visits a garden in Bowden, ten minutes away from the busy city streets of Adelaide. Here, Brooklyn’s urban edible garden is part of a network of neighbours who grow produce, share resources and learn from one another. Brooklyn ‘fell in love with the garden’ before moving in with friends five years ago and says the prompt to increase food production in the backyard just made sense.

When Brooklyn moved in there were eight raised veggie beds, “great infrastructure to start with, it just needed a little bit of love.” Initially, the fruit trees were grown in pots and re-potted each year with Brooklyn hoping that “one day when I finally settled down, I could put them in the ground.” Luckily, Brooklyn’s landlord agreed to have the trees planted in the ground and they’ve thrived ever since.

The edible produce includes tomatoes, basil, carrots and beetroots, heirloom lettuce, spinach, broad beans and broccoli. Brooklyn says, “I want to be able to put any excess out onto the street for anyone in the community to grab,” so they’ve set up a share cart at the front of the property.

Brooklyn grows most of her produce from seeds, and she’s worked up her own specifically designed polytunnel device for propagation. The two small polytunnels are installed with water misters that are set to a timer, and the flooring is set with a propagation heat mat. The positioning of the polytunnels is important and they’re in an area that gets quite a bit of sun. “I didn’t really have a use for my driveway anyway, and it does have some thermal mass properties – the sun will hit the concrete and it will warm up throughout the day.”

Inside the polytunnel, Brooklyn is growing three varieties of lettuce, three varieties of kale and some broccoli. With only one small heat mat, Brooklyn needs to rotate the seed cells often “but you can see the difference here; the ones that were on the heat mat germinated straight away, and the cells that are off the heat mat are really slow in comparison.”

In winter, when most backyard gardens are slowing down, Brooklyn makes sure hers is providing year-round. The tomatoes planted in late January have been carefully trellised, pruned and fertilised, and still look and taste amazing.

While harvesting carrots and broccoli, Brooklyn explains that one of her inground garden beds is relatively new and was prepared by her chickens. “I had (the chickens) living here for about four years before I decided to turn this into a market garden, so the soil has a lot of nitrogen already.” The beds were prepared using the hügelkultur method: layering fruit-tree prunings, leaves and compost into a deep trench and mounding soil on top. The result is that it’s growing abundantly and working well.

This garden isn’t the only one blossoming in this little corner of Adelaide. On her street is a close-knit group of gardening friends, which includes Brooklyn’s neighbour. Paul. The friend’s swap produce from each other’s gardens and share resources. Together, they created the Mudge Way Community Garden. The community grows lots of produce and has a bed designated to native food, including native river mint, muntries and native parsley.

Community spirit is really at the heart of what Brooklyn loves about gardening. As community gardens pop up around the country, more people who are living in rentals or apartments are getting the chance to experience this community connection. “It absolutely does grow community,” says Brooklyn and advises renters to “go for it; grow your own food. We eat like kings here; we go out every day and get the tastiest produce – you can grow in any backyard.”

Featured Plants:
CHERRY TOMATO ‘CAMP JOY’ – Solanum lycopersicum cv.
CARROT ‘STEFANO NANTES’ – Daucus carota cv.
BROAD BEAN ‘AQUADULCE’ – Vicia faba cv.
BROCCOLI ‘HAPPY RICH’ – Brassica cv.
RIVER MINT – Mentha australis
MUNTRIES – Kunzea pomifera
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