Today’s story is about a woman named Casey who lives near the beach with a bug-filled organic garden planted with fruit trees, flowers and veggies.
And no, it’s not me. And no, I am not in the middle of some sort of dissociative trance.
In fact, I kind of wish I was, because this Casey’s edible garden also contains loquats, sapodillas, dragon fruits, macadamias, chickens, bees and a black sapote that actually fruits.
Casey Walsh’s gardening game is strong, and if (like me) you are feeling a twinge of tropical tree envy, her patch will leave you inspired to add even more productive plants to your collection.
“Everything in the front is tropical,” Casey explains, showing me the black sapote, dripping with nearly ripe fruits. “It fruits constantly, like three times a year. The fruits taste like Yogo — it’s yum!”
Casey and her family have had this place since the early 2000s.
When it came to choosing this house in particular, the garden was a big selling point.
“The advertisement for the house was ‘a cornucopia of fruit’ and I was like, ‘Okay, I want that one’,” Casey says.
In the intervening years, the family’s collection of edible trees has continued to grow.
“Just about everything out here is a fruit tree of some description,” she says as we walk past macadamias covered in long, fluffy flowers, to the backyard, which is half-orchard, half-veggie patch.
On one side, trees cast dappled shade over the lawn. There is a Claret ash and a towering gum, as well as fruit trees — apples, pomegranates, an avocado and a native peanut tree with dark, fleshy leaves.
“They’re not true nuts so they’re good for nut allergies,” Casey explains. “They taste like peanuts. They’re nicest if you roast them.”
To the other side of the garden, rectangular veggie beds bordered by wooden planks are filled with productive plants.
Sweet potatoes creep under still more apple trees, chillies grow in every variety imaginable: hot red cherry chillies, purple UFOs, big green poblanos.
There are tomatoes, silverbeet, red veined sorrel, artichokes, marigolds, broccoli, cabbages, and native gingers, all labelled with silver tags.
Beyond the veggie beds, bees buzz in and out of a wooden hive that Casey’s husband tends to.
“In our first year we got 120kg of honey,” Casey beams.
In the beds that border the garden, Casey grows flowers — dahlias, roses, daisies, Geraldton wax, stocks and salvias— and a variety of dragon fruit that she assures me is the best.
“They’re the nicest but covered in spikes that you have to hit off with a stick before you eat them!”
Casey’s enthusiasm for her garden is self-evident. But she’s not the only one.
“Our kids and their partners all want to grow their own veggies too,” she says, sending me home with a ripe avocado and a pot of honey. If this place wasn’t a cornucopia when she arrived, it certainly is now.