Much of my life has been spent fighting a world desperate to put me in an office. My response has been, each time, to don work boots and stomp off defiantly into the sunrise. Looking back, Horticulture was an inevitable destination.
In 2003 I went to Monash Uni to study a double degree in education and science. I was fascinated by both invertebrates and plants, but was told (incorrectly) there was no work in those areas. Campus life introduced me to the Monash University Choral Society where I met the people who have been my family coming up on 20 years now, but the qualifications didn’t work out for me. I took a meandering career path through teaching maths, science and cookery, running zoo holiday programs, driving a waste management truck, and working logistics, all the while having the gardening bug slowly taking over my life.
Over time I collected more and more potted fruit trees and old recycling tubs full of vegetable plants, learning everything I could. One significant specimen to enter my life upon the death of my grandmother, was George II, a ficus she grew from a cutting of the original from my mother’s childhood home. In my family, owning a George II is compulsory. I have done my best to deter growth, but he thrives in spite of my efforts.
Like so many of us, COVID was my turning point. After a year of lockdown and working from home, I realised I hated office work. I was going to end every day crying for the rest of my life unless I drastically changed something. Not even the company of my cat asleep on the desk could make it tolerable.
I don’t know who raised the Idea of horticulture. It might have been due to all those plants of mine that people kept tripping over, or that the Cert III in Horticulture was on the newly released Free TAFE list. I ended up in the Cert IV program at Holmesglen with a fee subsidy aimed at getting women into trades. The whole program I was stressed that I wasn’t up to standard. I struggled with connecting to classmates, online learning, and the competencies-based marking scheme, never knowing what ‘enough’ was. In 2022 I received the Outstanding Achievement award from the Horticulture department, so I guess I was worrying over nothing.
Starting my garden maintenance business happened by accident. I was applying for work nearing the end of my studies, and one company said they wanted me, but did a bait-and-switch. I wouldn’t be joining a team as an employee as advertised, but acting as a sole contractor and building the business from the ground up for them. It was a terrible offer, but I had zero professional gardening experience, and no one else even gave me a rejection letter.
The whole thing started out as a disaster, from their unsuitable equipment to their difficulties with client invoicing. I quickly re-negotiated the agreement to use all my own equipment, as they clearly had no clue what they were doing. I parted ways with that company within the year when they
stopped paying my invoices due to financial difficulties, but kept most of the clients.
Growing Leaves gardening was up and running, and I haven’t looked back. In 2022 I got a position as horticulturalist in a local primary schools kitchen garden. Watching a child pull up a purple carrot for the first time is such a joy. Over the last few years I have worked to bring the garden back from
lockdown chaos, introducing crop rotation, expanding the variety of heritage foods grown, instituting a native foods garden, starting a seed saving program, and redesigning aspects of the infrastructure to improve water flow and reduce the rat breeding areas (I will win against the rats
one day, I am determined!).
It has been lots of fun to let my creative side out, designing gardens and coming up with novel things to do and grow in the kitchen garden. I also enjoy the opportunities for learning that horticulture brings. Today I attended a talk on urban rain-gardens, and will be spending this weekend reading up on filtration media. Plants and gardens will always have something new for me to be intrigued by, and I can’t imagine ever getting bored with them.