“I saw a video of someone regrowing garden scraps and I wanted to do it myself,” says Hugo.
From humble beginnings regrowing celery stumps, Hugo’s garden now boasts a plethora of plants, including chillies, tomatoes, strawberries, herbs and fruit trees.
“Celery is still my favourite plant to grow because it’s tasty,” says Hugo. “I love gardening because it’s fun and I can just go outside and pick food to eat.”
Another highlight of Hugo’s garden is the variegated candy cane chocolate cherry capsicum. Despite its eye-catching stripes, this plant is more than just a pretty face.
“It’s really nice – it’s basically a sweet.”
Hugo’s vegie patch overlooks a hill dotted with several salvia varieties and lemon verbena bushes, which are popular with bees, butterflies and other bugs. “I really like to eat edible flowers. They’re my favourite type of plant. Salvia is my favourite flower; it’s really tasty. You can eat the whole flower – you just have to beat the bees to the nectar.”
Hugo has a great knowledge of the plants he grows, confidently describing the best uses of each variety. He knows which chillies are good for salsa and which are the hottest; which tomatoes are better for canning or preserving and which are better eaten fresh.
He also knows the origin of each variety – whether it’s a native Australian tropical finger lime or a perennial chilli from the Andes. He uses this knowledge to pick plants that will thrive in the sometimes harsh Doreen climate, which balances summer heatwaves with winter frosts,
when temperatures drop as low as -8°C. “Last summer we had very strong heat. Right before a really hot day, we bought shade cloth and hoses and put those up to protect the plants.”
One day, Hugo plans to grow a food forest filled with avocados and mangoes.
“There are a couple of avocado varieties I really want to grow. I’d also like to grow guavas because they’re really tasty.”
Powered by his passion and curiosity – and delicious homegrown vegies – Hugo’s food forest dream is sure to come true.