Productive up-cycled food forest in suburban Sydney garden

Owner: Nita Lo
Location: Middle Cove, Sydney, NSW
Climate Zone: Warm Temperate to Sub-Tropical
Garden established: 2016 - 2017
Style: Food forest style garden designed using permaculture principles, sustainable practices, and some self-preservation as well! Nita explains – “my garden is on a slope, quite a steep slope…. it’s a 7m cliff from the top section to the bottom area, so I have designed the garden so that I don’t have to carry mulch, plants and green waste up and down the stairs”. “When I first set the garden up I almost wore out my knees getting all the plants and mulch down here” she laughs “so I use design principles that mean less stairs for me!”.
Key Features:
Nita has created a garden overflowing with life and abundance - wicking beds, raised beds, worm farms, composting bays, an upcycled garden shed, recycled and reclaimed pots, swales, food forest, native bee hive and verge garden, complete with a Street Library. And then there is the banana circle - basically a circular swale that clever gardeners like Nita use to turn their green waste, organic matter and water runoff into delicious bananas, pawpaw’s and other incredible edibles. Sure, at first glance it might just look like a hole in the ground, and essentially it is - little more than a well-planned circular ring of soil surrounding a pile of compost, but for hungry, fast-growing edibles like bananas and paw paws, this is almost the perfect way to grow.
Nita had a great banana circle, but, some travel and a rogue brush turkey has it looking less than ‘a-peel-ing’, so this one needs a touch of magic from Costa to get it up and happening again. Nita explains why she installed the banana circle in the first place – “this is my self-sufficient zone of the garden, everything has to look after itself down here”. “The design of the banana circle makes use of excess water run-off, or if water is scarce, greywater can be directed to the circle so water is reused. On top of that, bananas grow well in a circle, and bear bunches on the outside, making it an incredibly efficient use of space. Planting in this way also helps to create an instant microclimate, and affords the plants a level of protection from winds and even frosts”.
Plants Featured:
Arrowroot - Maranta arundinacea
Pigeon Pea - Cajanus cajan
Pepino - Solanum muricatum
Choko - Sicyos edulis

This garden was going to be open as part of the Sydney Edible Garden Trail, 20 – 21st March 2020. The physical trail has been postponed but a virtual tour will go ahead with live feeds. Look out for Costa in those.
Details can be found here: https://sydneyediblegardentrail.com/


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