Meet the grower
This keen gardener would rather grow food than flowers, and is committed to creating an edible oasis for her young family, writes SALLY FELDMAN
A passionate Brisbane gardener takes delight in converting her garden to a food oasis for her young family
Picture a suburban garden bordered by a broad stretch of river. Tropical fruit trees, including mango, persimmon, banana, custard apple, loquat, dragon fruit and papaya, thrive alongside orange, mandarin, fig, and, surprisingly, pear and apple trees. Chickens busy themselves beneath the leafy canopy, while two small children follow suit – fossicking, tasting, playing. Nearby, a cluster of vegie beds flourishes, fenced to ward off marauding chooks.
Welcome to Lee Sorbello’s home, just 15 minutes from Brisbane’s CBD on the banks of the Brisbane River – a river with an unnerving tendency to overflow. “Ours is a flat block, and a few years ago, my whole neighbourhood got flooded, but my street didn’t,” she says. “We were very lucky. We’ve not lost anything so far.”
This thriving 800m2 block is mostly hidden by the house and the mature trees surrounding it. Lee has been living here with her husband Charles and their young son and daughter for about five years, but her connection to the property runs deep. “This is my grandmother’s house. It has been in the family for more than 50 years now,” explains Lee. “I lived here when I was in high school and we never moved too far away.”
The garden played a part in Lee’s life even then. “My mum and her best friend were into ornamental gardening, but vegetables made more sense to me,” she says. “We’d put in flowers and I’d say, ‘What’s the point? Let’s put in a mango tree.’ We got the mango tree and a few other fruit trees in the ground, and then I think Mum began to see things differently.” That mango tree is now fully grown, producing sweet fruit for Lee’s family and the wider community, with whom she regularly shares her bounty.
Charles, too, had been introduced to gardening as a child. “He and his parents lived with his nonno (grandfather) in a house at New Farm, and were totally into growing vegies,” says Lee. “I’ve learnt a lot from him. We got persimmon and loquat seeds from his yard about 20 years ago when the family moved out. Charles kept these in pots until we had a place to plant them. The original plants are long gone, but he says the fruits taste just the same.”
waste nothing
Lee’s relaxed gardening style works on permaculture principles: “I compost everything.” She relies on her local community and an army of chickens, worms and black soldier flies to help, too.
“There’s a Facebook group called Buy Nothing, and two or three people come each week with a bucket of scraps,” she says. “I also get a trailer’s load of food waste from a local fruit and veg shop, which I share with someone else.”
Then, it’s simply a matter of letting those critters get cracking. “The chickens get to eat it first, then whatever they can’t eat goes into the black soldier fly farm. If it’s too much for them, it’ll go in the compost and worm farm,” says Lee. “You can empty the worm farm from the bottom, so I just let it overflow wherever I move it. I put it under the mango tree when it was fruiting, and now it’s under the persimmon. We try to put the compost bins (we have four or five at least) under the fruit trees,
CLOCKWISE FROM OPPOSITE
Lee with her freshly harvested Reisetomate tomatoes: “they’re called the traveller’s tomato because you can pull them apart while you’re travelling”; the children love collecting the fruit; a crop of Jap pumpkins; mixed rainbow carrots; the different chook breeds lay eggs in a variety of beautiful colours; multi-coloured Indian Berry corn.
so, as the compost breaks down in the open system, it all goes straight into the soil. The chickens then dig it over.”
Pests, too, get short shrift. “The best job the chickens have done is to keep the fruit fly population under control. If I miss covering a fruit and it gets stung, the chickens eat it along with any larvae,” Lee explains. “We’ve had the chooks for about a year now, and the amount of fruit fly has dramatically decreased in this time. You can’t eradicate them completely, but you can make it harder for them.”
Creating a healthy ecosystem in the garden brings other benefits. “I love that we have frogs and all kinds of interesting bugs,” says Lee, “A range of birds visit, too – king parrots, cockatoos, pale-headed rosellas and rainbow lorikeets – but we don’t have a problem with them eating all the fruit. They’ll take a small amount and we’re still left with lots. Planting more papaya has helped, especially with the fruit bats, because they love it and leave most of the other fruits alone.”
To avoid introducing sprays, Lee bags each fruit (pictured, page 63), or covers the whole tree, using old lace curtains. “Not only is this a good way to recycle the curtains, but it looks pretty in the garden,” she says. “The mesh is fine enough to keep the fruit fly out, and birds and flying foxes don’t get caught in it. We just move the bags as the seasons change.” She also plants spiky pineapples around anything she wants to protect from determined chooks.
never say never
Lee will give anything a try in her garden, but still, growing Josephine and Packham pears in subtropical Brisbane? “I will grow everything at least once, even if I’ve been told that it won’t grow in my location,” she says. “I’m not afraid of planting things slightly outside of their comfort zone.
Pears technically have a fairly high chill requirement, but we’ve had some success with them, even with the very mild winters we have here. We get slightly extra chill because we live by the river – winter holds on that much longer in the garden.”
She’s also not averse to removing any plants that aren’t working out, or using established trees to help out other plants. “It can get very hot here, and interplanting with the fruit trees has been fantastic.
They provide shade in the extreme heat. Sometimes, I’ll grow my cucumbers or beans through them, and if a random seed, such as a New Guinea bean, sprouts from the compost, I’ll let it go, too, as long as it’s not weighing down branches or growing into a younger sapling.”
Local food swap groups and online gardening communities have also brought inspiration, as well as an easy way to share recipes, seeds and produce. “We’ve discovered so many different varieties and fruits that we’d never previously heard of,” says Lee. “I made an online friend who has an amazing collection of fig varieties, so I was able to source figs from him that I’d been wanting for a very long time.”
In the end, whatever Lee grows, it’s there to be eaten and enjoyed, especially when plucked off the tree by little fingers. “I have two kids, so if it’s fruit, it’ll be gone! If it’s bulk vegetables or a glut of nectarines, I’ll preserve them. We give a lot away, too. The flavour of the fruit is so much better, because it can be left on the plant to fully ripen.”
OPPOSITE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP
Compost bins, a worm farm and chooks are all part of the permaculture system; ripe papaya; at Angel peaches; ripe macadamias; Lee with a tray of tomato seedlings to share at a garden swap.
RIGHT, FROM TOP
e family harvest the high-up peas, eating them straightaway; delicious mulberries.