Growing the good life

Take a bare plot of land on a hillside in Eketahuna, add plenty of horse manure to enrich the soil then wait for the worms to work their magic. Next, apply a healthy dose of resourcefulness by upcycling old farm materials to create garden structure, and you have a recipe for John and Antoinette Lambert’s Summer House Garden.

Through sheer hard work and thriftiness John and Antoinette repurposed everything found on their bare paddock – giving it new life in their garden.

An award-winning dahlia grower, Antoinette’s gardening interest began 30 years ago as she began to explore health in animals and humans. “We are what we eat, and so I began to dig deep into the connections between soil, minerals, microbe balancing. Good health starts from the ground up,” she says.

Antoinette’s innovative edible garden occupies a small space of about 100 square metres where she gardens vertically to pack as much into a compact space as possible. Five fruit trees: two apples, pear, nectarine and peach are espaliered (trained along wires to grow flat) to allow for maximum productivity.

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“Growing fruit and vegetables skyward and along structures is a smart way to garden intensively with minimal effort,” says Antoinette.

Antoinette’s strawberry tower consists of six wooden offset squares made from recycled sheep yards stacked into a tower. Strawberries are planted into the corners. In summer the strawberries cascade down the tower – “and you don’t need to bend down too far to pick your fill,” says Antoinette.

Her bespoke worm farm boosts soil productivity. Upcycling farm materials she had to hand, Antoinette built her own out of an old plastic drum, a few bits of polythene pipe, a square of carpet and some corrugated iron.

She collects the vermicast and dilutes it with water (to produce worm wee) to feed potted plants in autumn. The vermicast is used on the raised open beds in spring and autumn.

Worm wee and vermicast restore precious nutrients to the soil (lost through plants as they grow) and promotes microbial activity.

Antoinette uses hay bales to grow tomatoes and grows pumpkins in a compost ‘cake’. The pumpkins are an annual practice of building up a circle of compost, (starting with the spent tomato bale layer) covering with carpet and then cutting small holes for the pumpkin seeds. The carpet suppresses weeds, protects the worms and regulates the soil temperature.

Antoinette will be opening up Summer House Garden to the public for the first time on Pūkaha’s Wairarapa Garden Tour, 9-10 November. She will be on hand during the tour to explain how she maximises productivity. See www.wairarapagardentour.co.nz