Less is more, Interview with Natasha Morgan

Living in the greener part of Central Victoria, with good rainfall and rich volcanic soil, I often see beautiful gardens as I drive around. One particular garden caught my eye. Masterfully planted perennial combinations extended out onto the verge, then raised beds brimming with edibles sprang up; every last bit of space was filled with an abundance of crops.

When I arrived to meet Natasha Morgan, I was delighted to realise the garden I had admired for so long was her own wonderful creation. With a soundtrack of pouring rain, we settled down to talk all things gardening, catching nourishing glimpses of winter vegies through the windows.

Despite the extensive set-up and exuberance of her garden, Natasha told me she had transitioned from a five-acre garden to what is now her town-sized block. The decision to downsize was not an easy one. She had previously created an incredible garden but the epiphany came when she asked herself, “What do I really need?” Eating large amounts of silverbeet and being unable to do everything required to keep the garden running, as well as raising two young children, was too much. Her reflection, “As long as I have sky, air and water, I have everything I need”, saw her embrace the new challenge of capturing the lessons she learnt in her larger garden and put them into practice on a smaller scale.

Raised wicking beds surround the house with trellises and frames, making use of vertical space to grow climbers like peas, pumpkins and beans. She has even experimented with growing a zucchini bush vertically with resounding success. As we chat about getting the most out of limited space, I’m reminded of an old saying. “Admire large gardens, but keep a small one.”

Her garden beds are filled with rich soil, partly sourced from her land with the addition of mushroom compost and old manure from her chicken yard. The raised beds and rich soil allow her to grow crops spaced closely together and interplanted to get as much out of each garden bed as possible.

Moving to a smaller block has been a revelation for Natasha. While she now has less space, she produces more vegetables than she needs. Richer soil and the ability to concentrate her efforts into a smaller area make the garden highly productive. Recent changes to council rules allow her to grow on the verge, extending her garden well beyond her fence line.

Gardening has always been a part of Natasha’s life. From her late teens she remembers reading her mother’s Diggers magazines for inspiration and visiting Heronswood to buy seeds. Mostly growing flowers early on, an Italian boyfriend awakened her own Eastern European heritage and, before she knew it, they were decking out their suburban backyard with all kinds of weird and wonderful vegetable varieties.

“There was no turning back. I was preserving, bottling and pickling just like my grandmother used to do.” A passionate gardener, I could hear the joy in her voice. Throughout all the challenges and hard parts of life, she could always find peace in the garden.

“Even when life got tricky, I just worked my way through it by growing vegetables. That’s how to deal with life – even the simple act of weeding, it’s meditative, almost like therapy!”

Conversation turned to vegetable varieties and Natasha enthused over the heirloom cantaloupes and watermelons she grew over summer. In open, frosty areas, these can be a challenge as the short season sometimes doesn’t run for long enough for the fruit to ripen. In her wicking beds, sheltered by the house on the southern side, a microclimate was created, allowing for the growth of a wider variety of plants.

In her small garden, Natasha is very selective about which varieties she grows. Each must be very productive, but also have great flavour. Heirloom tomatoes are a favourite, and not only for their taste. The longer harvest allows her to spread out the preserving process into a few different batches. And of course, she loves growing them for their individual beauty, “reminiscent of still life paintings by the Dutch masters”.

Despite her background in landscape architecture and design, growing her current career was a happy accident – one she couldn’t have intentionally designed if she’d tried.