After following the rules of permaculture gardening to the letter, Amy Willesee relaxes her routine and gains inspiration from places close to home.

Four years ago, when my vegie patch was just an unpunctuated expanse of lawn and I was yet to plant my first seed, I wished that someone would magically appear and tell me what to do. All I had was a dream and some books on the bedside table. No hands-in-the-dirt experience, no design skills.

In the absence of a fairy godmother, I chose author Linda Woodrow as my guru and her book, The Permaculture Home Garden, as my guide. For a full year, I obeyed Linda's every command. If she planted beetroot, I planted beetroot. If she loved broad beans, then so did I.

At some point along the way, though, I began to break the rules. Only a few at first — I'm naturally a class-captain kind of girl — and, besides, I still love Linda's broad brushstrokes. But I finally realised why no-one else could tell me how to design and manage my own plot: in the end, it has to be sculpted to suit so many unique demands. Not just our soil and aspect but also our time constraints, my occasional lapses in care, and my children's distaste for beetroot and broad beans.

Once I realised how liberating it was to flout the rules, my favourite pastime became visiting other patches for inspiration. My first change came from visiting the garden of a fellow Linda devotee. Like me, Chris had imitated Linda's chook dome/mandala layout, but he'd customised it. Positioned, as it was, so near the entrance to his home, the patch needed to look good. For that reason he'd paved his pathways and planted lavender at the entrance, with a manicured bay tree right in the centre. The most enlightening thing I took away, however, was Chris' routine. Rather than moving the chooks and planting out seedlings fortnightly, as Linda suggests, he does it once a month, coinciding with the day of the local market, where he buys his seedlings. That way, the vegie patch is just a one-day-a-month job, easing the pressure and providing a built-in deadline.

Another Linda-inspired garden I visited looked completely different but proved to be equally inspirational. Susan's patch was surrounded by beautifully kept fruit trees, trimmed lawns and abundant flowers, all confirming my belief that vegie gardens can also be gorgeous.

I reaped more ideas from a substantial market garden, the size of which demands a higher workload. Owner David had come up with an ingenious solution: instead of constantly battling a grass invasion from the outskirts, he'd built a chook run around its perimeter, thus using the pecking and scratching of the chickens to keep the edges clear. This system requires a bit of fencing up front but after that, it's pure simplicity.

A few weeks ago, viewing a friend's new vegie plot, I marvelled at her generous mulching. There wasn't an invading blade of grass to be seen. It was enough to send me straight home to mulch up my own patch, and give thanks for discovering some real-life gardening gurus.

Plotting mix

To meet like-minded vegie growers and glean new ideas, contact your local gardening club, permaculture group or community garden organisation. Jackie French's inspirational edible garden is open in Braidwood, NSW, on November 13. Go to www.opengarden.org.au for details about this and other open garden events near you.

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