I don’t think I have written an introductory blog post before, so I thought it might be a good idea to share a bit about who I am and why I love gardening so much.
I used to be a lawyer but I developed schizophrenia in my early 30s, which changed my life. Prior to that, I worked for a large international law firm in London and Paris. I have since settled back home in Auckland, New Zealand. Unfortunately, my condition has made it impossible to continue working as a lawyer. It is very difficult to get a practising certificate from the law society with my condition, which is completely understandable given that it affects your memory and concentration. Something I started doing when I first became unwell is gardening, which I found to be excellent therapy. Working outdoors with nature simply made me feel so much better and took my mind off my problems. Over the past decade, I have developed a large edible and ornamental garden at my mother’s property. We have lots of fruit trees and I also grow vegetables and flowers. We have quite a few roses too. Over the past two years, I have gotten swept away by “dahlia mania” and now have a substantial collection of dahlia tubers. I spend a lot of time propagating my own seedlings from seed and raising them in my nursery. I have a greenhouse which helps a lot, especially in spring when it can be quite temperamental. Prior to the watering restrictions back when we had a drought and lockdowns, I used to sell veggie seedlings from home. More recently, I created a flower farm on our front lawn and started selling cut flowers on a small scale. Unfortunately, we had a lot of cyclones and floods over the summer which destroyed a lot of my flowers. For the past five years, I have written a free weekly newsletter filled with tips to help people learn the basics of gardening. I am also active on Facebook and Instagram. After a decade of gardening, I have decided to take a sabbatical this year so I can step back and think about where to from here as I have been feeling very disillusioned lately. Gardening in New Zealand is not quite what it used to be due to climate change and the growing number of pests and diseases which were not such an issue in the past. I have written blog posts on these subjects recently which you can read if you are interested. I still spend a couple of hours each day keeping the garden tidy. I also spend a bit of time developing my blog so I can share what I have learnt with others.
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What I love about being the creator of Anita’s Garden, my new start up, is that no day is exactly the same. As the saying goes, change is the essence of life. Every day at Anita’s Garden exposes me to new experiences and challenges. As discussed in my previous blog post, running a business gives me the flexibility to devise my own schedule. I can juggle tasks so I can fit what I need to do into the day and do things when I want to do them. The flipside is that I work very hard, probably on a par with the hours I used to put in during my former life as a commercial lawyer at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, one of the world’s largest law firms. At the moment, I work 7 days per week. All start-ups require a great deal of effort from their inception but mine is particularly demanding because Anita’s Garden exists in two forms: (i) a physical organic urban homestead with an extremely productive edible and ornamental garden which must be continually maintained and developed through the seasons; and (ii) a business which includes a boutique plant nursery and gardening consulting service, which is marketed through regular activity on various social media forums and my website which contains an active blog. On top of this, we also host wwoofers (travellers with working holiday visas) who are provided with lodging and meals in exchange for some assistance around the garden. We put a lot of effort into making sure that our visitors feel at home and leave having learnt a great deal about gardening. To learn more about wwoofing and our experiences as hosts, click here.
This is what a typical day looks like for me at Anita’s Garden: 4.00-4.30 am: Wake up. I’m an early riser. Ginger, our cat, scratches on my bedroom door and opens it with her paw. She then walks all over me and wants her morning cuddle. 4.30 am: I check emails and my social media accounts for new activity. I also check for messages on Wwoof and respond to any new requests for stays. This works for me as I’m a morning person. I find I function more effectively early in the day. 5.00–6.30 am: It’s quiet in the house so I have some uninterrupted time to work on blog posts and write articles for my monthly gardening newsletter. I have breakfast. 6.30-7.30 am: I like to fit some exercise into my day. I have diabetes so this is really important for me. I go for a walk or a run around my suburb. 7.30 am-8 am: On my way home, I usually swing by the supermarket to pick up a few groceries. The supermarket is really quiet at this time of the day. Hardly anyone shops early in the morning, at least here in New Zealand. It’s a great time to get grocery shopping done quickly without crowded aisles and long queues at the checkout. 8.00-8.30 am: The wwoofers are up and have finished their breakfast. They spend half an hour helping with meal preparation for lunch and the evening meal by cutting up vegetables from the garden. While they’re doing that, I have my daily green smoothie with kale fresh from the garden. I quickly check emails and my social media accounts for any new activity. 8.30-12 noon: The wwoofers and I are ready to start the working day. I set tasks for the day and the wwoofers help me around the garden. Sometimes I’ll work alongside them, sometimes I’ll be in the garden doing other tasks. Other times, I need to delegate tasks so I can free up some time to develop my business. At the moment, I’m raising heat loving seedlings such as tomatoes, eggplants and capsicums indoors on the heat pad so I check on their progress and spray them with water. 12.00-1.00 pm: Lunch. We always enjoy a proper cooked meal with wwoofers at our dining table. It’s a time for us all to relax with some good food and conversation 1.00-2.00 pm: Back outside in the garden. Wwoofers normally help me for an additional hour, finishing tasks off for the day. 2.00-5.00 pm: The afternoons are spent on more admin and business development, as well as writing blog posts and articles. On some days I run errands or use the time to visit garden centres. If I’m out and about, I try and squeeze in a quick coffee at my favourite café. 5.00-6.00 pm: Dinner time. Wwoofers gather round the table with us again and we enjoy an evening meal together, similar to lunchtime. 6.00-8.00 pm: I finally enjoy some down time. By this time of the day, I’m starting to get tired so I’m not as alert as I am in the morning. Sometimes I use the time to stay connected with friends overseas via Whatsapp. Ginger often wants to sit on my lap so we relax together on my bed and I pat her. On Tuesdays, I meet with a small group from church and we enjoy catching up with each other. 8.30 pm: Bed time! It’s still very early but I need to go to bed now in order to get enough sleep as the next day I wake up at 4 am and the cycle starts again! Anita’s Garden grew organically. It stemmed from a hobby that, put simply, makes me happy. I was fortunate to grow up on a ¼ acre section in Whangarei surrounded by fruit trees, flowers and vegetables. I helped my parents in the garden over the weekends. In those days there were no Xboxes, smart phones, Ipads or even the internet.
Gardening is great therapy for grief, as I discovered after Dad passed away in 2012. I planted an oriental lily called “Hot Spot” in the garden in his memory. Gardening is also great therapy for stress. From September until April, the garden is a nice place to spend time after a day at the office, when the days are longer in the Southern Hemisphere and it is possible to potter around outdoors. The garden is also a great place to take your mind off your problems, because nature can be very healing. It is gratifying when something grows. Flowers in bloom are beautiful left outside or can be picked and brought inside to admire. If you live in an apartment in a big city, try having a few pot plants on your balcony. If this isn’t practicable, the next best thing is to visit a public park or garden. I highly recommend Kew Gardens in London and the Gardens of Versailles outside Paris. Whenever I felt down while I was living in Europe, I always felt better after wandering around a public garden. I really enjoy growing our own fruit and vegetables. However, complete self-sufficiency remains an unrealistic goal for many reasons. Firstly, there are space constraints on an urban section. Secondly, it is difficult to produce fruit and vegetables evenly throughout the year due to uneven temperatures, which can cause crops to bolt to seed prematurely. Working outdoors with soil, seeds and plants has kept me grounded and taught me to appreciate what’s really essential to our survival. Air, water, food and shelter (put simply, protection from the elements) are basic necessities in life. Some sunlight is probably helpful too, for vitamin D. The internet, hair straighteners and luxury cosmetics are not necessary to our survival. While it's understandable to want to enjoy the finer things that life has to offer, I have relished being taken back to basics. In my next blog post, I will discuss how I created my own startup, Anita’s Garden, in more detail. |
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