How to grow a garden in hell | introduction

A foul-mouthed introduction to my book for Perth gardeners

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Notes:

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• It’s the first chapter of the new gardening book I have just begun working on!

• I’ll be sharing more chapters from my book with paid subscribers as I write them.

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Hello! If you’ve read the notes (above) you’ll know that today’s newsletter is an excerpt from the new gardening book I have just begun working on. But I wanted to quickly explain a little more in case you skipped past the notes and arrived here.

I’ve wanted to write a book about gardening for ages, but I’ve been putting it off because, frankly, I find the idea of that much work and commitment mildly terrifying and I still have about 800 copies of my last book, Seasoned, crammed into our study (incidentally if you’d like to cook seasonal food right outta your garden with easy AND delicious recipes, Seasoned is the cookbook you need! You can grab a copy here).

And then about a week ago I realised that I’m already writing lengthy articles about gardening every week right here, and what is way less scary than tackling a whole book on my own in a little room is being able to share it with you, little by little as I write it. Like a serialised newspaper story. My hope is it’ll hold me accountable and stop me from freaking out about the scale of the project every other day.

Also, it means you can give me feedback, ask questions, request clarification and basically make this the most useful book it can be. Want to leave a comment? Click the button below!

So what’s the book gonna be about? It’s going to cover everything I know about growing a rambling, life-filled garden in sandy, dry soil, in a Mediterranean climate, when you’re starting from absolute zero with a bare patch and no clue where to begin.

Basically, it’s the book I needed a decade ago when I started my garden.

The book has a big focus on gardening in Perth, because that’s what I know, and that’s the information I feel is sorely lacking for gardeners in my hometown. But a lot of chapters will be easily applied to other regions - especially on topics like garden design, gardening for wildlife, attracting beneficial bugs etc.

I really hope you’ll find it helpful, funny, encouraging and interesting.

But that’s enough talk about a book that doesn’t even exist yet. Now you know what the plan is I’ve gotta write the bloody thing. Let’s get started.

P.S. Thanks for being here - your presence is way more motivating than you could ever imagine.

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How to Grow a Garden in Hell

A growers’ guide to gardening in a char-grilled sandpit

So, you want to grow a garden.

All things considered that is an entirely justifiable desire. The only problem is you live in a sandpit, perched on the edge of a raging sea, on land that is many millions of years old and hasn’t seen a whiff of fertiliser (save the odd kangaroo dropping) in a few millennia. Your ‘garden’ is largely composed of crisp, brown couch grass and each time January rolls around, you (and whatever half-dead plants you’re trying to grow) are baked to oblivion by the offensive rays of a sun that really, truly doesn’t give a shit about your hydrangeas.

Welcome to Perth. Let’s grow some stuff.

Why am I writing this book?

Once upon a time (when I was trying to work out how to build a business that would let me spend all day in the garden and all my money on plants), I was briefly coached by a woman whose brand was very… pink. There was a lot of glitter and much talk of ‘kicking ass’ and ‘thriving’, which is fine, I guess. But in order to ‘kick ass’, the specific business advice she gave me was that I needed to broaden my reach, expand my market. Basically, to work out a way to offer gardening advice that could be applied to absolutely everyone on the planet. Especially people in the US who (she assured me) would part more readily with their money than the suspicious, hesitant customer base that lives down under. It didn’t matter that I knew absolutely nothing about growing plants in heavy Texan clay soil or through a snow-covered Chicagoan winter. Don’t just focus on Perth, she told me, you’ll never get the customers you need.

And that’s really the problem isn’t it?

When it comes to gardening advice, almost no one is willing to talk about Perth because a population of 2 million isn’t considered a big enough customer base. We get way less airtime than the other states on national gardening programs, there are fewer books written for us, fewer online guides dedicated to us, and fewer speakers coming to inspire us. Bloody Monty Don didn’t even visit Perth last time he toured Australia. Maybe he was scared of our redbacks.

Because we are both small and remote, our sandy little city just isn’t on the radar of most of the inspirational gardeners on the planet and so a whole lot of the advice they give doesn’t apply to us, our soil, or our seasons. And this might be fine if we were, say, gardening in the rich, fertile soil on the side of a Sicilian volcano, or growing plants in a climate that rains so often we don’t even need irrigation.

But we are doing neither of those things.

If you are gardening in Perth, you are attempting to grow plants in one of the harshest environments, in some of the world’s poorest soil, and with (relatively speaking) a total dearth of gardening advice to help you. In the face of limited information, a fiery February sun, gardens filled with grey sand and builders’ rubble and couch grass that refuses to die, can any of us really be blamed for throwing our hands up in despair, chucking a couple of agaves in the backyard and calling it a day? No.

But our gardens could be so much more than that.

They can be havens for insects and wildlife. Retreats from the muck and smoke of city life. Places where we can go to break our addictions to screens or a myriad of life’s other vices. Places to grow food, to pick flowers, to feel the sun graze the back of our necks or watch silvereyes bathe in the morning dew that settles inside large, cupped citrus leaves. Gardening can be a creative experience, a meditative experience. It can provide you with a source of hope, it can help you get fit, help you get over a breakup. I realise I’m pretty much doing backstroke in a vat of my own Kool Aid right now, but believe me - it tastes great, and there really isn’t much in life that can’t be improved by a stint in the garden. Except maybe a manicure.

And yet, so many people are put off before they truly hit their stride. Through a combination of boring, overly complicated ‘rules’, gardening know-it-alls who are eager to tell every beginner that they’re getting it wrong, and appallingly hot summers that kick most gardens in the guts every February, it’s easy to see why so many of us throw in the towel. But, as I hope you will see in the chapters that follow, growing a beautiful garden in Perth is entirely do-able. You just need the right approach, some good tactics, a tonne of manure and plants that are suited to the job.  

You also need to enjoy yourself.

And I think that’s the other reason I want to write this book. I am sick of getting (usually unsolicited) gardening advice that smacks of arrogance, overcomplicates everything, promotes perfectionism and saps the joy and creativity out of something that is supposed to be a leisure activity. We grow gardens to have fun, to connect with nature, to create something delicious and beautiful…so why does it so often get turned into work?

Over the years, I’ve been told that my yard is too messy, that I should be growing only native plants, that my roses aren’t pruned correctly, that the Monstera deliciosa (split-leaf philodendrons) I’m growing are going to “kill the native koalas” (the commenter was apparently not aware that koalas are not native to WA and are certainly not frequenting my garden), that I shouldn’t plant store bought potatoes and that I must commit to calling my plants by their Latin names. Among a lot of other advice I never asked for.

To these people with their admonitions, rule books, and legitimately insane commentary, I want to say two things. First, I want to ask them if they realise just how arbitrary the majority of their rules are. That cultivated roses are human creations that bare only a loose resemblance to their wild rose ancestors (which absolutely no one bothered to prune). That Latin names are only useful to the extent that gardeners can remember them (which, for me is about 20% of the time), and that the concept of a ‘native’ plant is so frequently misapplied that it usually misses the point. Mostly though, I just want to tell them to fuck off.

A lifetime of gardening and playing with plants has helped inure me to the words of these tight-arsed naysayers. They irritate me, but they’re not going to stop me planting things. But what about the gardeners who are just starting out? The ones who lack confidence? Who are already overwhelmed?

They don’t need rules and admonitions. They don’t need to be made to feel stupid or like there’s some giant hill to climb. They need simple, practical and encouraging advice. They need to know that it’s normal to kill a few plants, that it’s ok to make changes slowly, and that Perth soil is truly shit for a lot of plants, but that it’s also workable. That there are plants that will not only survive here, but will thrive. That it’s great if you want to grow native plants that thrive in your local region and it’s also great if you want to grow exotics, or plant your own food crops, or grow only cacti, or fruit trees or flowers. That there are a million ways to garden and almost all of them are infinitely better than concrete or astroturf.

We’ve been putting the cart before the horse, expecting rules and recipes and checklists of jobs to teach people how to grow a garden they enjoy. But it’s not about creating your ideal garden and then enjoying it. It’s about learning to enjoy the process of gardening itself. As long as you are having fun, you are doing it right.

Find a way to love the time you spend out there, and the skills and knowledge (and even the Latin plant names) will follow.

The goal of this book is to make gardening in Perth as easy, straightforward and unpretentious as possible, in order that you have more fun out there, growing whatever it is that excites and intrigues you most.

Here’s a quick summary of what’s coming up:

Part 1: Know your enemy (all about Perth)

Part 1 covers everything you need to know about Perth’s soil (chapter 1), climate (chapter 2) and seasons (chapter 3) to set you up for success in your garden.

You’ll learn simple ways to understand and improve your soil if you want to grow veggies or non-native plants that need more moisture and nutrients to thrive, tips for growing a garden that is able to survive the heatwaves and dry spells that hammer us each summer, and how to work with Perth’s seasons, embracing the best times to build your garden for the biggest return, rather than falling into an endless cycle of giving up every autumn and starting over every spring.

Part 2: Laying plans

Part 2 covers the planning stage of your garden (chapter 4). How to get over that feeling of overwhelmed paralysis if you’re staring at a bare patch of dead lawn or a past owner’s half-baked attempt to design a garden. You’ll learn how to use pre-existing environmental constraints (like walls, sheds and trees) to your advantage, how to build living zones into your garden, how to experiment with pathways and how to create an enclosed, private and protected atmosphere, no matter your garden’s size.

Part 3: Plants

Part 3 covers everything to do with the plants you choose. In chapter 5, you’ll learn all about selecting plants that are predisposed to thrive in a Perth garden (and in other regions that also have sandy soil and a Mediterranean climate). You’ll learn how to select trees for your garden, how to choose perennials and self-seeding annuals for a low-maintenance cottage garden, jungle garden and hardy dry garden, plus how to tackle the trickier microclimates in your garden (like sandy and shady spots, hot, dry beds, beds that get summer sun and winter shade, and other hard-to-plant zones).

In chapter 6, you’ll learn about planting design - how to place the plants you’ve chosen to create a garden that is wild and beautiful, without being too chaotic. How to use repetition to create a cohesive garden, how to experiment with symmetry and asymmetry, and which plants bring out the best in each other (like a garden design version of companion planting).

Part 4: Life

Part 4 looks at all the life in your garden. First we look at the other lifeforms you share your space with. Well cover topics like how to attract more wildlife, how to take a lazy (and ultimately more successful) approach to so-called ‘pests’, and tips for building a garden full of beneficial bugs, lizards, birds and local wildlife (chapter 7). I’ll also recommend reliable and beautiful local native plants you can add to your garden to bring in more native critters and birds while still retaining a cottage garden feel.

In chapter 8, we look at YOUR life in your garden. Which is - maybe - the most important part of all. After all, none of the tips and advice I share with you in the rest of the book will count for squat if you don’t turn the last page filled with the motivation and excitement to start planting. In the final chapter of this book, I use my background in psychology to help you find ways to turn gardening into a way of life, rather than a series of jobs. How to grow a therapeutic garden that encourages mindfulness, how to approach your garden on the good days and the bad, how to ditch perfectionism and build a garden that works for you and your life (even if your life is busy, and especially if your life is stressful).

Ultimately, I hope when you close this book and head outside, you feel the same way that I do about growing a garden. That it is not only an achievable goal for a Perth gardener, but that it may be one of the most valuable things to do with your time. After all, the collection of small, seemingly insignificant moments we experience each day make up the sum total of our brief and precious lives. If you ask me, spending as many of them as you can in the golden morning sun, fists in the earth, knees grubby and pleasurable perspiration dripping down your brow, is a very good way to live.

Let’s go!

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Thank you for reading! See you next time for more Lo fi life!

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Speak soon! Xx Casey