Jackie French: How to cope when you can’t garden

It can happen to any of us – an injury or illness that puts gardening out of reach for a time. How did JACKIE FRENCH manage when it happened to her?

The withdrawal symptoms began after three weeks without planting or picking anything in the garden, or even having a gentle mooch. An accident had led to surgery, the surgery went wrong… and it has been a year now since I have planted even a tomato bush.

It wasn’t easy. I planted my first vegie garden at 18. Gardening has been part of the heart of my life ever since. We eat mostly from the garden, both veg and fruit. Our vases are filled with the flowers and leaves of the season. Ever since they were the only presents I could afford to give, I’ve loved taking baskets of produce to friends, though admittedly they are not quite as thrilled after the 10th basket of limes, chokos or zucchini. But not this year. How did I survive?

FRIENDS Gardening friends are the only possible way for a bone-deep gardener to survive. Friends will bring you baskets of home-grown produce in season. You won’t need to depend on pallid supermarket tomatoes. Once the word gets out, there’ll be home-grown, green-skinned-but-luscious-inside peaches, bunches of silverbeet, salads made from home-grown rocket.

I was brought flowers too – not the glorious bouquets brought to hospital, but tiny bunches of floppy-stemmed roses or buckets filled with stunning waratahs. With every bunch I felt connected to the seasons again.

HELP: PAID OR VOLUNTARY

Our garden doesn’t need much work but it does need some, and I live with a man who has not learnt when and how to pick asparagus in our 30 years of marriage, or which is parsley and which is coriander.

I had to accept that not only was I not gardening, but I wasn’t going to garden for at least a few months – enough time for fruit fly to invade the tomatoes, or for weeds to overcome the onions.

Actually, a big achievement over the last year has been that, finally, I’ve learnt to ask for help, and understand that others like helping, too. I no longer feel embarrassed being the helped, not the helper.

ACCEPTING THIS MAY LINGER

Things have improved, hopefully permanently, but maybe not. I will never be as agile as I was before the surgery. So I have to accept that when (not if) I go mooching in the bush or into the rougher parts of our mountainside orchard again, I will do so with crutches, even if I no longer need them all the time. It is too easy to trip on rough ground, especially with wombat holes, bettong nests in the tussocks, and tree roots that have grown massive since I passed that way.

With a bit of help, there will be some vegies planted this spring but they will be climbing ones. I have even bought spiral frames for the tomatoes and zucchini to train them upwards, so I don’t need to bend or squat to pick them.

I’ve bought long-handled tools to help me plant and weed, and the veg will be planted with paths between them, instead of the crammed wilderness of previous years, so that crutches won’t squash the squash. I’m even planning something that I hope will never be needed: level paths that suit wheelchairs, as well as above-ground garden beds.

But today, for the first time in a year, I put the hose on some ultra-dry avocado trees, then picked a basketful of lemons. Yesterday, I picked parsley, and I am ordering a glorious abundance of seeds.

Not gardening is okay for a year. But long-term? I may need to plot to get my plots, but I am determined I will always have a garden.