Little wonder

“It’s not my forever home, but that’s not going to stop me from gardening!” Breanna Parker says of the flourishing, flower-filled garden she has created in a new housing estate at Clyde, on Bunurong Country in the outer south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne/Naarm. 

Breanna and her husband, Luke, bought the 400m² block of land seven years ago and built a brick home for themselves and their son Mason, now 10. (They have since had another son, three-year-old Levi.) Well before work on the house finished, Breanna started planning the green space around it. She began the garden from “literally nothing – it was just a pile of dirt”, and has steadily shaped it into a pollinator-friendly oasis. The house fills most of the corner block, leaving Breanna with what she calls her “tiny garden”, which consists of small garden beds and movable planters that go anywhere she can squeeze them in.

The fenceless front garden overflows with flowering plants (mostly native) that make the home stand out in an area where concrete, fake grass and yuccas are the norm. It’s no wonder that passers-by stop to chat and admire the garden whenever Breanna is outside. With its abundance of flowers and grasses, it also attracts bees and other beneficial insects, and local nectar- and insect-feeding birds.

Needing more planting space, and with permission from the local council, Breanna extended the front garden onto the nature strip, where she has planted low-growing, hardy natives including digger’s speedwell (Veronica perfoliata), groundcover grevilleas, kangaroo paw and grasses.

A narrow north-facing strip running beside the house gets just enough sun in summer to become a productive patch. In winter, however, there’s too much shade from the tall boundary fence for successful food production. Instead, Breanna uses the radiated warmth from the brick walls of the house to overwinter her potted chillies and capsicum plants. 

Parts of the garden are less than a metre wide – the space between the house and the side boundary fence, for example – but everywhere you look there are plants. “I’ve ignored the spacing recommendations on the labels,” Breanna admits, and this is one of the ways she fits more in and makes the garden look so full. Because she plants so densely, she puts a lot of effort into soil health, adding plenty of worm castings and homemade compost.

Shadows from the house and boundary fences create little microclimates all around the garden that Breanna uses to advantage. Small shaded pockets are bursting with hydrangeas, epimediums, camellias and cyclamen. 

In the sunniest spots in the backyard are dwarf or columnar fruit trees planted in large black plastic pots that are half-buried in the ground. Breanna does this so the pots don’t topple over in the wind (the flat plains of the area create a wind corridor) and so they don’t dry out as quickly. This clever trick also means that if the family does decide to move, Breanna can easily take her beloved fruit trees with her. 

Grouped in clusters around the backyard are lots of felt planter bags with handles. Breanna loves these bags as they’re cheap, lightweight and easy to store away when they are not being used. Into them she has planted raspberries, rhubarb, chillies, capsicums and more. The moveable felt planter bags are also Breanna’s secret to creating an overflowing garden vibe without digging or adding garden beds. Clustering the bags together helps prevent them from drying out and creates microclimates.

Breanna has a ‘learn-as-you-go’ approach to building and growing her garden, experimenting and trying new plants to see how they perform. She attributes her love of gardening to her mother and late grandmother, who she watched garden as she was growing up. Both of these inspirational women had a passion for home-grown food and DIY, but as an adult Breanna’s passion wasn’t sparked until a combination of lockdowns and maternity leave in 2020-21 gave her the time and motivation she needed to really start her tiny garden. With a background in education as a teacher, Breanna also loves to share her knowledge of gardening in small spaces via her Instagram page, @tiny.garden.growing. 

To further reduce costs, all the manual labour has been DIY and Breanna grows a lot of plants from seed. And, much to her family’s dismay and cries of “but where are you going to put that”, she finds it almost impossible to pass up a markeddown plant on the clearance table at her local nursery too! 

Covering half the backyard, a raised timber deck incorporates a built-in fire pit, bench seating and heavily planted wooden vegie crates. The crates are movable so they can chase the sun over the year. Tall, fast-growing ‘Gracilis’ bamboo, a clumping variety, grows behind the deck seating to screen a neighbouring two-storey home and give the area a secluded feel.

“My garden is a space for me-time,” Breanna says, “the process of gardening is holistic to me.” Luckily, her family also enjoys the produce, and Mason and Levi happily eat straight from the organic garden, especially during tomato and berry season. Breanna is blown away by the bounty she is able to grow in such a small space, and she is proud her weekly grocery shopping really only includes fruit and vegetables that are either out of season or can’t be grown in her cool climate. 

Photography by Virginia Cummins