If you haven't yet read the beginning of my gardening journey - how I became a little garden obsessed check out my post, 'Thriving Amidst Concrete'.
Part-two of my gardening journey begins in when we moved to the hilly suburb by the Botanic Gardens (take a guess).
Still pretty close to the city, only a 5 minute car ride to the centre, but situated on the side of a hill with almost no flat land or really that much space... gardening took on a whole new meaning.
We adapted pretty quick. I packed up my, now rather large, collection of pots and my three-tiered planter and settled them into their new home bordering a green jungle of steep overgrown weeds and trees.
Pretty soon we begun carving the hill, learning how to build retaining walls and creating new gardens out of the mass of green. Each new box/retained garden, was an opportunity to grow more varieties of vegetables, flowers, and herbs. Whilst they were small areas, my edible garden grew.
Our new adopted cat (Missy) with the three-tiered planter, Missy showing off the jungle, and the transformation.
Through our hilly garden, we gained use of the land, making the most of our backyard and successfully harvested crops of tomatoes, carrots, parsnips, beetroot, cauliflower, broccoli, and even passionfruit, to name a few.
I still had a bunch of pots (so handy to move around) and we added in a compost bin, putting food scraps back into the garden to create better soil for the following months (definitely do this if you can!).
We had a decent amount of sun in the summer months, but much less during the winter, making winter a much harder time to grow anything edible.
I quickly learned what would get eaten by bugs, mice and other lovely critters who found my garden their own personal feast in the colder months. Thereby, avoiding disappointment when my carefully nurtured seedlings would disappear within a day.
But, when the garden did grow, it went all out. I would be so excited coming home from work to spot our sunflowers swaying in the wind at the top of the hill. Hard to miss, their bright yellow faces. It is still my favourite flower to this day.
One of our sunflowers, happy as larry.
Slowly my garden started to expand as I found every available space to plant in. And then it all changed.
It's ok, we are almost there - one-part left to bring you up to speed.
It gets pretty cool. I promise.
Catch you next time.
A very successful broccoli that did not get attacked by white butterflies and their offspring.