As we gladly head into 2021, it's good to remember that we had plenty of beauty in 2020.
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The Newcastle Herald is highlighting some of the bountiful and interesting gardens we covered in Homes of the Hunter last year.
Activities were limited, but it was a great time to get your hands dirty.
We spoke to people living in Belmont, Shortland, Anambah and Blackalls Park.
When we covered Wendy Abel's property in January, she'd been working on it for more than three years. She told the story of how she'd moved to her one and a half acres in Belmont, on what was once an old rock quarry. Now she's filled it with 50 varieties of plants. There are heaps of vegetables, herbs, chooks and bees.
She's always adding healthy foods to her garden and sharing produce. Before the pandemic, she held gatherings on her land so that people could share knowledge.
We get something like 250kg of honey a year
- Mark Brown, Purple Pear
Her life has changed dramatically. Before moving to Belmont Wendy worked as a sonographer and the family lived in Eleebana.
"I now eat around what I grow, I've changed my diet. I go to my garden and say 'what do I feel like eating today?'" she says.
"With the food forest, the idea is the larger canopy protects the lower ones. It's a permaculture principle," she says.
Permaculture is a recurring theme on plenty of Hunter properties.
Mark Brown and Kate Beveridge began their 14 acre farm, Purple Pear, in Anambah in 1998. A natural love story, the two met at Hunter Organic Growers Society and now the two vegetarians have a thriving property.
They grow mainly vegetables, fruits and nuts.
It's all seasonal. They have brassicas, kale, mizuna, beetroot, shallots, lettuce, snowpeas, peas, garlic and a variety of stone fruit.
"I think we get something like 250kg of honey a year, and that goes to the subscribers and I eat a lot of it," Brown says.
Subscribers are people who pay to be members of community-supported agriculture. When this story first appeared in August, Purple Pear aimed to give supporters 10 different items in the box per week.
Brown and Beveridge's property is much larger than Michelle Teear and Cameron Young's third of an acre.
Teear and Young run Bellbird Urban Permaculture with her young daughter and parents. The pair reap plenty of rewards despite the little landscape. They live in Blackalls Park and the property is full of life. When this story was published in May, Teear said her father, Michael, and mother, Judy, lived on the property as well and had been a big help with the permaculture.
Lots of planning went into the location. The house is surrounded by zones divided into different gardens and orchards. The vegie patch is strategically built in the shape of a mandala to maximise growth. They have chooks, indigenous plants and a sugarcane jungle for juice and garden mulch.
"Our initial aim was to provide for ourselves. The main vegetable garden is 100 square metres; I designed it to feed four people," Teear says.
"We always aim to grow extra, so you'll have at least enough to feed the family."
Last, and just as luscious, is Katy White and Matt Smith's permaculture endeavours in Shortland.
From aquaponics to Madagascar beans, the pair have embraced the life philosophy: earth care, people share, fair share.
"Everyday decisions we'll say 'is that permaculture? Is this a sustainable decision?' You have to choose the lesser of two evils," Smith says.
When this story was published in November their solar powered aquaponics had silver perch in the water and leafy greens growing above. (They also eat the silver perch but they mostly eat vegetarian.)
"You've got to put the water in, circulate, and add water to it. Nitrogen fixing bacteria develops in the beds," Smith says.
"Lachy (of Tree Frog Permaculture) can tell you all the technical terms about nitrates.
"Fish poo fertilises the plant and the plants suck the nutrients out of the water which gets cycled back to the fish for clean water."
Bees, beans, brassicas and so much more. Many gardeners and permaculturalists in the region were prepared in 2020.
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