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Canberra Today 25°/29° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Trudy’s garden is good enough to eat!

A GARDEN that will feed the family and provide a beautiful environment to enjoy might be the stuff of dreams, but for Trudy Yogini it’s a wonderful reality in her modest Ainslie backyard. Trudy's garden

A productive cornucopia of fruit, flowers, vegetables, herbs and many other edible delights, Trudy’s garden is bursting with colour, flavour and texture.

“Ultimately, my garden not only produces delicious food, but it also provides me with a deep sense of happiness and satisfaction,” says Trudy. “It teaches me patience and respect for the environment, and it keeps me close to the most basic rhythms of nature.”

Her garden will be open to the public on the weekend of February 2-3 as part of the Open Garden Australia program.

Over the past seven years, Trudy has transformed the previously established cottage garden and water-guzzling lawn into a private, productive and sustainable oasis, where she grows a wide array of plants.

“I’ve planted a very wide mixture of trees, bushes, vines, veggies, herbs and so on. Varieties have been carefully selected to try to provide a steady supply of produce over the four seasons and also to survive the harsh extremes of the Canberra climate,” she says.

Stone fruits, nuts, figs, persimmons, pomegranates, olives and citrus thrive alongside a range of berries, from cape gooseberries and strawberries to raspberries and blueberries.

Flowers integrated throughout the garden provide year-round colour and the benefits of companion planting, as well as encouraging bee activity and contributing to biodiversity.

Other sustainable practices include water harvesting, seed saving and low-impact pest control, including bird netting and homemade sprays using soap, vegetable oil, bicarbonate of soda, garlic and so on.

18 Hawdon Street, Ainslie, 10am to 4.30pm, February 2-3, admission $7, under 18 free.

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Kathryn Vukovljak

Kathryn Vukovljak

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