Meet the gardeners and their garden

The trend with many new homes today is to have a huge house and no garden.  Dan and Sian have happily gone in the other direction – on their corner pocket block of about 430m2, their garden is just under 300m2.  Moving into their home seven years ago, Dan and Sian’s plan was to keep all the native trees, but add in as much food growing capacity as they could.  In addition to raised vegetable beds in the back garden, they use vertical growing spaces and are gradually reclaiming the nature strip with a row of feijoas and a series of connected vegetable beds.  The corner location with two street frontages means that gardening is a very communal activity, with passers-by often invited in to see what is growing in the garden. 

 

Come to see, learn and be inspired!

• Check out the two-storey, hand painted street library on the Meanderri frontage.  It serves as a spot for sharing excess garden produce grown by Dan and Sian, while neighbours also sometimes drop off their produce here.

• In response to the challenge of very heavy clay soil, Dan has crafted raised garden beds from repurposed materials, with a lot of focus on soil improvement and mulching.

• This eclectic garden is also home to many cacti and succulents and a bonsai oak that has been carefully cultivated by Willow, who is learning this ancient art from an Inverloch local.

• In summer, the front garden will become a lawn of watermelons and strawberries, with the latter being a firm favourite of the boys.  Pumpkins will also feature, sometimes grown on the lawn, sometimes on arbors.

• Fruit trees, nuts and berries include: feijoa, loquats, apples, pears, nectarines, figs, peach, plums, apricots, watermelons, tamarillo, passionfruit, kiwifruit, Chilean guava, citrus (lime, grapefuit, oranges, mandarins, tangerine, lemonade), avocado, macadamia, strawberries, kiwiberries, gooseberry, mulberry, and ‘babako’ – otherwise known as cold weather pawpaw.

 

Parking and accessibility

Easiest parking is in Meanderri Drive at the front of the property, as Youll Drive is a dead-end court.  Garden is flat, but there are some narrow pathways.

 

Address

​1 Youll Grove, Inverloch (corner of Meanderri Drive and Youll Grove)