Young talent time

There’s something intriguing about a conversation with a gardener beginning, “No one in my family’s really into gardening.” It speaks volumes of the individuality, curiosity and gumption of 23-year-old Zoe Kelly, who’s turned her 3m by 4m second-floor balcony in south-east Sydney into a productive patch in just two years. Mind you, it helped growing up in Camden, in outer Sydney, where she regularly visited the local Australian Botanic Garden Mount Annan.

One of Zoe’s abiding childhood memories is of pulling out some aloe vera from a plant growing on her grandmother’s patio, then scrabbling it into the dirt in another spot. She was five or six. “It’s huge now, and still going strong,” she says. “It’s called ‘Zoe’s Plant’!” She reckons it sparked her fascination with succulents and cacti when she was older. “I had a huge windowsill full of them in my bedroom when I was a teenager at home,” she says.

While Zoe left her collection behind when she moved out – “It was too hard to keep moving it around” – her gardening instincts persisted. The apartment she now shares with her partner, Peter, and the couple’s lop-eared rabbit, Winston (Winnie), finally provided the opportunity, although setting up the garden had its challenges. Being on the second floor meant negotiating two sets of stairs with all the materials –planters, soil, compost – and there was the issue of watering. “I didn’t have a tap outside, so I had to water the plants with a watering can,” Zoe explains. “So Peter put a fixture on the laundry tap and we bought a 20m hose. I just click it on and I’m good to go.”

Zoe’s garden is blessed with optimal sunshine hours and a prodigious onsite fertiliser producer in Winnie the rabbit, who’s rewarded with a diet of carrot-top fronds, a variety of herbs and whatever other edibles need trimming. “Whenever things start getting a bit bushy, I just put them on the ground and Winnie goes wild. The garden benefits him and he benefits the garden – it’s the circle of life,” she says. “Apparently, rabbit droppings are among the most beneficial for the garden. It certainly seems to show in my plants.”

She also grows as much as she can vertically. “The plants love it!” says Zoe. “If you make things climb, they’re off the soil, so nothing gets mouldy or soggy, everything gets a lot of air, and light is able to get through the plant more easily.” The wind factor isn’t a problem either.

“I use bamboo stakes and try to structure them in a way that allows the air to go through. I have two quite big tomato stake structures in my planter boxes, but use them for cucumbers, and I’m shocked at how well they’ve adapted to growing upwards. They’ve just gone crazy.” She’s even making her watermelons climb.

When the pandemic hit, Zoe started working from home and she hasn’t looked back. Her corporate job can be pressured at times, but her garden has proved a saviour. “Working from home was hard at first, as you’re alone most of the time, so it’s really nice to be able to take a couple of minutes to walk outside and check on your plants. That’s what I love about them – they’re always changing from one day to the next. I have a lot of herbs and I love smelling them. When it’s hot, the scent of thyme takes over the whole balcony.

“It’s a time out, a safe space, a ‘me’ thing, and I wouldn’t give it up for anything. I would encourage anyone to give it a go, even if it’s just two or three plants – just something you can go to when you’re having a stressful moment.”

Header image by Brent Wilson