Post #1 My Story
Blog Description: It’s not often the journey to Permaculture gardening begins with a patch of rosebushes, but here I am 30+ years later…
Hi! I’m Mary, and I have been gardening on the same small property in South Florida, Zone 10, for over 30 years now.
When we first moved in, I didn’t know anything about gardening, much less about doing it in our climate. I just knew I wanted flowers and herbs, and had romantic dreams of fresh produce from our own backyard.
Except for lawn, a hedge of hibiscus and a weedy mound in the front yard, the landscape was empty. A nearly blank slate, and I didn’t know where to start. But soon, a friend gifted me some roses and I had to put them somewhere. It’s not often a journey to permaculture gardening starts with a patch of roses, but this is how mine began!
I caught the gardening bug fairly quickly. I experimented with annuals and perennials in the backyard in case I got it horribly wrong. And I kept a record of triumphs and failures, which I discovered are really just learning curves.
Soon the roses were joined by more ornamentals, mainly flowering shrubs, and the backyard became a playground for my edible endeavors. And that’s where more and more of my attention went.
A couple of years in, there were annual gardens back there, filled with flowers and herbs. Herbs led me to vegetables. I worked hard each season to grow a garden large enough to allow me to skip the produce section at the grocery store.
Then I got frustrated. I was working too hard and spending too much for the meager harvests we got in return. I had to be missing something.
I took to my local libraries and subscribed to gardening magazines, only to find the information applied to most of the country, but not here. Eventually I found Florida Gardening Magazine and a few books. Yet, there still wasn’t much information easily accessible to the general public for our climate.
Meanwhile I was learning about permaculture, forest gardening, and integrated pest management and I wanted my landscape to be more sustainable. So I started experimenting again and found these principles worked very well to keep pest and disease problems to a minimum. I also planted fruit trees and was given subtropical perennial food plants to grow.
I took more notes while adding new plants to the landscape and realized the edible perennials required little care. Once established, they would produce food throughout the year, even when they were occasionally neglected when we were out of town for weeks at a time. Now I was getting somewhere!
As my gardening adventure continued over the years, I wanted to share what I was learning and discovering. So I decided to spread this information farther than just word of mouth to friends and neighbors.
It was the 1990s and the internet was just becoming a more mainstream tool to exchange and share information, so I started a website. It quickly gained traction and before I knew it I was not only giving talks at my local gardening clubs, but I was talking with people in similar climates all over through the website.
In more recent years I have found myself busy with other endeavors, including my passion for jewelry making. These projects, and some health issues, strayed me from the website for some time, but I haven’t stopped gardening!
As the interest in homesteading, organic gardening, and sustainability continues to rise, I decided to create a new website. There is a lot of general information out there, yet I am still surprised by the lack of information for our climate, though there is more than there used to be.
What you will find here is information specific to our zone 10 climate, and especially to suburban gardening in small spaces with neighbors close-by. In South Florida we also contend with the rising sea levels and hurricane strength weather. Pile on the climate change that is being experienced collectively around the world, concerns of food security and disaster preparedness, and here we are to talk about it all!
I have been looking into all of these concerns alongside my gardening research over the years as it is all interrelated. I believe we, as a human race, can help reverse some of the damage we are causing by working together and sharing knowledge.
I am excited to share with you the many tips and tricks I have learned along the way in my 30 plus years of gardening experience. Yet, I am here as much to learn from my readers as to share and teach what I know.
Thanks for stopping by! Please check in often and share your thoughts and questions here, or use the Contact form top right. My blog doesn’t have comment capability yet (it’s a new platform), but I’ll get back to you as soon as I can, and will respond.
I post weekly on a variety of subjects related to gardening in our subtropical climate, and will be incorporating suggestions from readers like you.
Happy Gardening!
Mary