Ruth and Ian at home in their orchard
WANDERING the rows of Ian and Ruth Gawler ‘s raised-bed vegetable garden and magical fruit orchard, it is hard to believe what they have is just six years old. When the couple moved to their 6.4 hectare property just out of Yarra Junction, they dedicated half a hectare to growing their own food and now boast five avocado trees, two pear, four apple, five citrus, stone-fruit trees, quince, olive and a bay tree.
A good water supply was among the property’s attractions, with a dam, a creek and bore water.
The joys of working in an edible garden came to Ian when he was a boy, courtesy of his grandmother. He remembers her abundant backyard ‘as a source of delight “I never had to be coerced into the digging and carting in my grandma’s garden.”
She had a fig tree at the back of the garden with a compost heap underneath it, he recalls. “I used to love the alchemy of the compost – all the scraps that people didn’t want were left under the fig tree and you’d come back in a few months and it would be transformed into this wonderful rich compost: ‘ he says. “It strengthened my connection with things natural.”
Connecting with nature remains a priority for Ian and Ruth, at home and in their work at the Gawler Foundation. After his recovery from cancer in the 19708, Ian co-founded the foundation to provide holistic support to people with illnesses.
“As I was coming out of my illness in 1978, I leased a veterinary practice [he originally worked as a vet] in South Adelaide. My first daughter was born around that time, we lived in a flat with no garden but the veterinary practice had a vacant block adjacent that was covered in rubble.”
He says that with the help of Esther Deans’ no-dig gardening method, he converted the block into a vegetable garden that was producing food within two months. “Our little family lived off that for two years,” he says.
He built on his knowledge of organic gardening at a course by Peter Bennett. (He recommends Bennett and Deans’ books : Organic Gardening and No Dig Gardening, respectively.) Further inspiration came in Scotland in the late 70s – Ian completed the Findhorn spiritual community’s gardening course. The Findhorn garden’ was created out of a belief in working in harmony with nature.
“Findhorn’s course was more esoteric than Peter’s; they were focused on tuning into the subtler energies of the plants. Because of my meditative background and interest in the mind and spirit, it added another dimension in recognising that plants are living things and as a consequence of what I learnt at Findhorn, I had a much more profound respect for them.”
In their garden today, Ian enjoys the preparation and planting while Ruth takes pleasure in the harvesting. He grows organically, plants by the cycles of the moon, rotates crops and takes account of companion planting. “Once you establish a good garden, the plants get more resilient so we don’t have a lot of pest troubles,” he says.
As to the rewards of his garden, Ian says: ‘The flavour of home-grown fruit and vegetables is reliably – dramatically better than commercially grown vegetables.”
But just as importantly, he says it keeps him sane. “It is one of the best ways of attaining balance in my life. When people talk about their long-term good health, the thing that’s going to make the biggest difference is their lifestyle – and one of the key elements of that is what you eat”
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