I’m a firm believer that we can all grow more food than we think in the space that we have. All we need is to create new strategies more adapted to urban spaces.

My Border Garden design demonstrates a few examples of how to do so:

• Utilising a food forest design, with trees, shrubs and ground covers, to create a layered garden maximising available space.

• Succession planting - summer Amaranth and sweet potato leaves are in peak harvest, soon to make way for cool season purple bok choy, mizuna seedlings freshly planted.

• Vertical growing - make the most of edges and fence lines by choosing climbing plants like red malabar spinach.

Gone are the days where food gardens only served utilitarian purposes - a veggie patch can gifts both food and beauty to your outdoor space.

Bursting with a kaleidoscope of colour, with varying textures and a visual delight at every layer.

Stepping stones invite you, the gardener, to get close and interact with every detail.

A food garden does best when it offers new harvests and interest with each turn of the season.

Perennials (such as the yuzu, cumquat and jujube trees) are used to anchor the design, complemented by fast-growing annuals that can be edited through the seasons to evolve and grow with the gardener.

A careful plant selection ensures joy year-round, from the jujube’s autumn display and glossy dwarf citrus, to vibrant Thai Basil and the ornamentally shaped sweet potato leaves.

A traditional pond re-imagined to grow water plants anywhere.

Any large pot or container can be turned into a vessel to grow aquatic food plants in any sized-space.

Make it a home for water spinach (kang kong), watercress, water chestnut (forget canned, grow your own fresh!) and Vietnamese mint.

A garden can be a canvas for conscious creativity outdoors. For the fellow crafter, I’ve included a couple of my favourite outdoor DIYs made with commonly available repurposed or upcyled items.

• handmade plant signs: made with scrap plywood, mounted on tree prunings.

• mosaic pavers: breathing new life into plates thrifted from the op shop, discarded on the verge and accidentally broken but saved.

As a gardener from a permaculture design background, I like my patch to be a menagerie of useful plants, growing in harmony with nature.

Think:

• Pollinator-friendly gardens: growing veggies and flowers together, and allowing annuals and herbs to flower in place.

• Edible ground covers like sweet potato, that also function as a living mulch, assisting with moisture retention through dry, hot summers.

• Multi-functional plants: ones that bring in seasonal colour, sensory delight or multiple uses like nitrogen fixing capabilities.

• A compost system for every space: for a smaller patch, consider an in-ground worm tower to create organic matter in situ.

Organically grown food, with all its little nibbles, crookedness and asymmetry, is an utterly perfect illustration of nature’s work.

Food gardens are a working garden by nature, ever-changing and being harvested - you’ll see cut amaranth greens among fresh bok choy seedlings.

Embracing this idea has also been a kind reminder to embrace the beautiful complexity of life as a human being, and is a gentle reminder of the lessons our garden can teach us.

Good news just before Christmas!

Propagating plants from the backyard

Plants are potted up once they root

A carport mud map of garden design