Hello!! How the hell are ya?
I’ve been gone a while and now I’m back and oh my god, while the break has done me good, I have to admit there is a weird, pressurised feeling about writing the opening lines to a newsletter after such a long period of silence.
It’s the same sort of feeling you get when you struggle to fill an awkward pause in conversation with someone you don’t know very well. The first few seconds are fine, or they would be, if you could just think of something to say in time to fill the conversational void. But then you get inside your own head and you start thinking how weird it would be if the next thing you talk about is the weather (how obvious), or work (how dull), and how insensitive and egotistical it would be to just start talking about yourself instead of thinking of some thoughtful question to ask them, but the problem is, you can't even remember their mother’s name or, actually ANYTHING salient about their family, their work, or their life, so what exactly are you going to ask??
The silence spreads, and sprawls, and it gets worse and worse the longer it lasts, and maybe you don’t actually feel this way at all, maybe your social interactions are always smooth, and light, and easy, but I inevitably find myself rambling about something like the space-time continuum or where have all the insects gone OR the worst thing I do is I start a story and realise halfway through that it’s not actually remotely interesting and it has no actual point and I freak out and abandon it, like a drunk sailor jumping ship. And by that point there’s really no coming back from the brink.
But here I am. I’m back from the brink. Hello! And you’re evidently still here too, so I guess we’re all going to have to just find a way to cope.
Today I shall be filling our conversational void with a discussion on beginnings.
Do gardens even have beginnings? I’m not too sure. They are almost always inherited spaces. Even in new-build suburbs, gardens are filled with little relics of the past. Usually unhelpful ones that make starting a garden a lot harder (builders’ rubble, yellow sand and random detritus). Older houses have established plants that you take on, like new children, needing your care and affection. And so we pick up, inevitably, where someone else left off. I think it’s useful to remember this, because when it comes to my garden, even though I’ve been here so many years now, I am relentlessly starting over, rethinking, reworking, and beginning again.
Here’s what a decade of starting over has taught me:
Starting over does not mean you’ve made a mistake
If you read garden design books and try to follow landscaping advice from the pros, you may end up thinking that needing to start over and re-do your garden means you’ve somehow failed. I know I’ve thought this in the past. After all, if you’d come up with a really good design from the start, surely you wouldn’t need to redo it?
This kind of thinking makes a lot of people feel like failures when they inevitably tear up a bed or rip out a plant. They should have known better, they should have planned more.
Phoey. You know how professional garden designers got to be professional garden designers? Sure they probably studied a whole lot, but I’m willing to wager they did something even more impactful - they tore apart a lot of gardens, and started over. Starting my garden over (and over, and over) has taught me SO much. It’s taught me what plants tolerate mid-summer transplantation and which ones will keel over and die. It’s given me ideas for layering plants in my garden beds, so they look full but not chaotic. It’s inspired me to try new layouts, to combine straight paths with winding beds, to tinker and test and test again.
And to be honest, I didn’t do any of that because I was trying to learn anything. I did it because it’s FUN. There is nothing as cathartic and creative as allowing yourself to admit that a part of your garden just isn’t working, and to pull it apart with your bare hands and start over. Living with something you don’t really love is a heavy feeling, and when you finally bite the bullet and say ‘enough’, you might be surprised by how much creative energy you suddenly have to begin again.
We tend to start over at the worst possible time (spring!)
All that said, in Perth, we tend to start over in our gardens at the worst possible time...
Don’t start your garden over in spring!!! Spring is, funnily enough, the time when I do the least in my garden. Sometimes I actually find myself kind of bored. Spring is when plants go nuts - they fill every bed, they erupt into blooms, they are delicate, like an emotional teen trapped in a hefty growth spurt. They do NOT appreciate transplantation, and any drastic landscaping changes you make to your garden will leave you with floppy spring annuals that could have been uproarious and joyful, but instead look a bit battered and sad. Do not begin your garden again in spring!
The problem is, if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, you probably are going to be starting your garden over in spring. If you’ve been living under layers of snow that have only just melted, spring is the time to get your plants going, to pull everything back out of hibernation and start growing. It makes sense in a cold climate, sure. But I desperately want more Perth gardeners to realise it makes absolutely no sense for us.
By spring in Perth, if you’ve played your cards right, your garden should be set. It should be taking off. You plants should be in and growing like wildfire. Trees and perennials should have established themselves over winter, your sweet peas should already be winding up trellises. Spring is the time for champagne in the garden, for celebration, flower picking, and starting summer veggies. But our knee jerk reaction, so often, is to just copy what they do in the Northern Hemisphere. We twiddle our thumbs all winter, and it leaves us far, far behind schedule.
In Perth, gardeners also tend to ride a yearly emotional rollercoaster that goes like this:
Summer is too hot, your soil turns to sand and you plants die, so you don’t garden.
Autumn is cooler, but everything is a wasteland and your plants are still dead. Plus, winter is coming and who starts a garden right before winter? You don’t garden.
Winter arrives and even though half the time it is 20 degrees and sunny, we trick ourselves into thinking that it’s just ‘not the season for gardening’. And we don’t garden.
Then spring hits and suddenly everyone is off to Bunnings to buy sub-par soil improver and a tonne of seedlings that will thrive for a month or two before they are - once again - battered by the same summer sun that turned everyone off gardening the year before.
It’s a vicious, relentless cycle that means so many people stop and start gardening every year, making little long-term progress and ending up frustrated and burnt out.
Don’t start your garden over in spring! Start your garden in…
Autumn: the best time to begin your garden (again)
It’s not quiteee autumn yet, so I feel my advice is coming to you at the perfect time. START YOUR GARDEN NOW!!!!!!! Autumn is the best time to begin (or start over) a garden in Perth. It is the best time to make any design changes you want to make, to shift paths, move perennials and add trees. Honestly, anything you want to do in your garden is best done in autumn, when the soil is still warm enough for plants to establish in new positions, but not so hot that the stress will kill them.
It’s also the most horrifyingly beautiful season to be a gardener. The golden light, the slow, still afternoons, the trees changing leaf.
Autumn is when you need to plant your sweet peas and countless spring flowers - sow seeds for them in autumn and the plants will grow far bigger and healthier than if you waited to plant them towards the end of winter. You will get more - and better - flowers and bigger, prettier plants.
Late autumn (and through winter) is also the best time to fling seeds around the place and let the rain water them in. If you have had limited success with seed sowing in the past (and especially if you, like me, can’t be bothered with hand-raising seedlings in little trays), you’ll likely find you have much more success if you just pick the right season to throw your seeds willy-nilly around the garden. Check out my blog post about scatter flowers (below) if you want some ideas for things to sow over the next few months.
It’s ok for things to get worse before they get better
Finally, remember that it’s truly ok for things to get uglier before they get prettier. Most garden overhauls will batter your backyard just a little bit. About a month ago I tore out an entire garden bed and the bare patch of earth I left in its wake is only just starting to fill with grass. Yes, it looks worse, but it has to look worse in order to get so, so much better.
We’re expecting our second baby this winter and at some point this January I finally admitted to myself that there were just too many garden beds to maintain, and that hanging out in the backyard with two children and two wild dogs will probably be a hell of a lot more peaceful if I can actually SEE them all from the comfort of my deck chair. Plus, more lawn to play on and just a few less garden beds edged with gnarly limestone blocks for them to smash their heads and scrape their knees on is surely a good thing for my sanity, and for their tissue paper skin and squishy fontanelles.
I’m of the view that if something isn’t working, it is always better to go one step back to move two steps forward, and once you do it a few times - once you get used to making a total mess in your garden - you’ll probably realise just how much fun it actually is. Wield total control out there, like an artist smashing yet another layer of paint onto their canvas. It’s your space to do whatever you like, and you don’t need to please or impress anyone but yourself.
Just promise me that you’re not going to pack it in and leave your backyard alone until spring. Stick it out with me, here, over the next 6 months, and I guarantee you, your garden will reach depths of beauty you can scarcely imagine!
What’s coming up
It’s because of all of this that I feel like autumn is actually the start of the gardening year, not summer and not spring. There is so much to do out there, so much to plan, so many dreams to be dreamt and seeds to be sown.
So where to now?
First, if summer has turned your soil to crap, you might like to check out my new ebook that I released over Christmas. It is designed specifically for Perth gardeners and gives you a step by step guide to improving our horrific soil. Perth-specific garden advice is so hard to come by, and when it comes to our unique (and uniquely awful) soil, we really need a guide just for us. My guide will help you get your soil healthy, moisture-retentive and filled with life, with just a handful of locally-available products. And autumn is the very best time to overhaul your soil. You can grab a copy here.
Next, think about trees. Perth has the worst tree canopy of any state in WA, a truly embarrassing fact. And I’m sick of waiting for the government’s lofty plans about tree planting to actually reach fruition. We can make a change to the urban environment NOW, this autumn, by filling our gardens with trees. Trees attract birds and other wildlife, they substantially cool your home and garden, and they are beautiful. It’s a real, tangible change we can all make to combat the effects of global warming. If everyone in Perth did it, our state would be unrecognisable. Start this autumn by adding some trees to your garden. If you’re looking for ideas, check out this post from last year, where I list just about every single tree in our garden.
As for the rest, I will be back in your inbox every Monday from now until the next school holidays, with ideas to try, plants to plant and tips to keep you motivated, inspired and - most importantly - happily covered in dirt, with the sun on your back, never forgetting that growing plants and befriending bugs is one of the most enjoyable, simple and life-affirming things we can do on our little blue planet.
P.S. If you’d like to access all my upcoming garden guides and the full archive of recipes and posts, you can upgrade to a paid membership by clicking the button below.
Thank you for reading! See you next time for more Lo fi life!
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Congratulations!!!!! 🥹🥰
Yes this is such good advice. We are so eager to do some gardening work in the next months! What's your recommendation for the age of new trees that you want to plant? Should we get tube stock or go and get a young established tree... Or? I'm not even sure what all the other options are but we'd love to add more trees to our garden for shade!