A pause and a breath. What a year. Not a lot has gone according to plan. But as usual, back to the garden for respite, relief, restoration and renewal. What to do in the garden this spring Right now: Prepare vegetable bed soil for seedlings, with compost, manure and fertiliser. See Wagtail Urban Farm‘s videos for how to prepare your soil, and Starting a Garden in Adelaide ebook* p. 18-20 if you’re deciding what kind of vegetable beds would work best for you. Prepare soil for later spring tree planting (p. 28), bearing in mind to choose locations for your subtropical treasures where they’ll h ..read more

Happy Sunday, Adelaide gardeners! The new PDF format eBook is now up on a new page of Nadja’s Garden and is free to download. (Update 30/3/20: file is now compressed to 8MB) FREE eBOOK: Starting a Garden in Adelaide – a guide for beginners Please feel free to share with your gardening (and about to be gardening) friends. There will be improved editions to come, replacing this first edition over time. Love, Nadja ..read more

Yesterday I was passing through Oaklands Estate Reserve at Marion. I paused to wonder what life would be like if, instead of navigating by the roads and railway lines, numbed by our devices, we instead found our way by the old landscape that’s still there underneath – the creeks and rivers; the trees that line their ancient floodplains; the soils and the plants they nurture; the rhythmic migrations of the birds and animals. To keep this land that we depend on alive and well, we need to find our way back to nature’s reality. The map, as has so often been said, really is not the territory. This ..read more