Veggies 🥦   Berries 🍓   Fruits 🍋    Nuts 🌰 

Meet the gardeners and their garden

In 2013 Cynthia and Andrew moved to their Kilcunda home, a relocated Queenslander-styled weather board, relocated from Brighton, on an unusual, triangular shaped corner block at the back of Kilcunda.  However, it was not until April 2020 during Melbourne’s first Covid lockdown with inspiring motivation from two neighbours, Kent and Al, that Cynthia and Andrew took on the challenge of creating a new garden.  With amazing support from their neighbours and community, including an 8-tonne truck and trailer from Phil and Kent’s dad, 9 tonnes of earth were removed using an excavator, and a 9m raised garden bed was built, and then 7 tonnes of mulch delivered and spread along the 60 meters of garden beds.  Generously all worked and gave freely!  Another neighbour Lizzy helped to select and organise the native plants that attract pollinators.  Their front vegetable garden provides a unique opportunity – it is highly visible, so neighbours, dog-walkers and passing children can see the seasonal progression from young seedlings to fruiting vegetables.

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Come to see, learn and be inspired!

• The ‘fruit and nut alley’ planted on one of the nature strips includes figs, apricots, artichokes, hazelnuts, macadamias and walnuts, with a tumbling composter installed to keep the nutrient levels up as these trees produce fruit and nuts.

• Cynthia has used other clever gardening hacks to improve her soil.  She has installed compost feeding tubes into the raised vegetable beds, so encouraging worms to move up from the soil into the vegetable beds.  Cynthia is also using ‘hugelkultur’, layering branches and other decaying plant material on the top of some garden beds to enrich the soil and assist in water retention.

• Vertical spaces are also used to grow food with passionfruit vines tumbling over the veranda, climbing frames installed in the vegetable beds, and other edibles espaliered against fences.

• Challenges in this garden include watering, with most watering done by handheld hoses, heavy clay soil and possums.  Blueberries which need more acidic soil have been planted in pots under a pine tree, with the pine needles creating good acidity.

• Fruits, berries and nuts include avocado, figs, apricots, grapefruit, passionfruit, strawberry guava, pepinos, cherries, Japanese mandarins, feijoas, plums, Cape gooseberries, blueberries, strawberries, mulberries, hazelnuts, macadamias and walnuts.

Parking and accessibility

Garden is at the corner of Kilcunda Ridge Road and Hillview Crescent, so parking is available in either street.  There is a gentle downwards slope on the garden.

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Address

​37 Kilcunda Ridge Road, Kilcunda