Open Garden (2012)

September just flew past and it took October with it. November had come and our Open Garden was fast approaching. Before I knew it the day had arrived and the garden had actually conspired to make a little show of itself.

After only two years in the garden the banana has produced an inflorescence and is now gradually revealing its small fruit. The Goji Berry has fruit, the ever-productive Babaco had forming fruit to show off and a multitude of plants were in various stages of flowering or setting seed. The weather has been kind with a light afternoon sprinkle on Friday and over-cast to sunny the rest of the time. After Friday afternoons visitors, Saturday was a steady stream of folks coming down into the garden for a peak.

I was not sure exactly how the garden would be received but everyone showed either surprise, delight or amazement on various levels which are reactions I will cherish.

The main reaction from people seemed to be something along the lines of:

• There is so much stuff growing in such a small area!
• Look at how packed it is and why aren't I doing this too?
• I never thought of growing that here!
• I never thought of growing it that way!
• What an amazing little garden.

In the conversations with people there was also a general consensus that it is probably better to do something with the space you have rather than thinking more land is better. I too had a dream in my teens to one day have a large area of land to grow fruit and veges and plant areas of native vegetation for wildlife. I still think the latter reason is a good one, but as far as land size I've looked at different sizes and I keep settling on less might be more appropriate - at least for the near future and for household means. The main reason - and others I spoke to agreed completely - is that more land can be a lot of work and a whole lot more intimidating and overwhelming when it comes to maintaining a garden, especially of edibles.

I can count the number of gardeners on one hand that I know personally that have reasonably sized land areas and keep them maintained and producing quite well.