My edible garden is located in a tiny urban courtyard with an odd configuration, somewhat L-shaped with three recessed areas.
Photo © The Gourmantic Garden
Living in a coastal part of Sydney, my urban garden is located in a tiny courtyard. The space has an odd configuration, somewhat L-shaped with three recessed areas. It’s mostly paved with a border of poor quality, shallow sandy soil with a depth of 5-15cm sitting on rock and concrete. The courtyard is open to the elements on three sides, north, west and south which means it get the sun all day. There is no shelter or a shady spot, although the south facing side gets some reprieve during winter.
I started gardening in containers and one raised garden bed. Now I garden in a combination of containers, raised planters, seven raised garden beds with some in-ground planting and a Vegepod I acquired from council clean up. I make use of old council recycling boxes that people put out every now and then as they’re ideal to grow a variety of edibles. With the exception of the raised garden beds and some of the raised planters, the entire garden was established from items that were saved from landfill, given a second life or repurposed. It amazes me how much people throw out that can be put to good use in a garden, be it pots, plant markers, planting troughs, overhanging baskets, shelving, watering cans, seedling trays, buckets, shade cloth, stakes, hessian bags, fake grass, trellis, water smart pots, even a Vegepod. All it takes is a little elbow grease to make some of them look new.
I have designed the garden to be at a comfortable height while keeping some symmetry and aesthetics. In the process, I’ve had to give up some entertaining space, downsize the outdoor furniture and banish the BBQ to a balcony. The courtyard can still accommodate a stand-up cocktail style party with friends roaming around the garden with a beverage in hand.
This page was originally meant to be an exhaustive list of everything growing in my Sydney garden, past and present. But with over 200 varieties of plants, mainly edibles including a sizeable amount of bush tucker Australian natives, it is not easy to keep it up to date.
If you’re curious about the layout, my garden was featured on Gardening Australia in May 2021 and you can view the segment in the sidebar or on the website here.