Gardening in harmony with nature is ideal to adapt to today’s crises: vegetables from the veggie patch, fruit from orchards, regenerating habitats for wildlife and carbon capture, and joy, fitness, fresh air, wellbeing from beauty and tranquility… Paradise! Local workshops, community gardens, many books and online knowledge can help start and answer any question.
Everyday goodness for lunchAutumn harvest to storeGood for the soils, good for ALL
Nature and the garden are so abundant, they provide even much more! Here we’ll share about garden goodies, tea and coffee, skin oils, medicines, lollies, fertilisers… So much goodness, mostly for free!
First in, champion dandelion!
Dandelions have flowers nearly year round, which means they brighten the yards and feed insects year round. The whole plant has therapeutic value, especially useful to cleanse the liver and heal hepatitis, therefore also good for skin, rheumatism, everything. So we consume it everyday.
Two young leaves per person in lunch sandwiches or salads;
Two bigger leaves per person as greens in dinners;
Young dandelion flowers are one of my pleasures: as I potter around, I just pick one with the milky stalk that I fold and eat like a lolly;
And my morning “coffee”:
My dandelion root coffee satisfyingly replaces imported acid-forming coffee while giving that morning kick. It also transforms weeding into root harvesting. I cut the leaves off as I harvest the roots, then soak overnight for the soil to drop. Next day, I chop the roots, and leave on a fabric to dry for several days, then roast (180°C for 10-12mn – keep an eye!), then blend in a ninja, then store. I use one spoon per cup, adding milk or not. Dandelion root coffee can also be purchased here.
SoakingCuttingDrying, then roastingBlendRich and earthy, and a little kick!
Dandelions are either loved or hated! There are many FB groups of dandelion lovers sharing beautiful photos and AI compositions of flowers, seed heads, fairies, wishes and happy gardens. There are also many metal sculptures of seed heads. For other people, dandelions are a weed, sprayed systematically (with dangerous chemicals). I often ask those people why. They have no answer! For me, dandelions hold joy and magic, they are so clever: dandelions in deep grass will grow flowers on long stems, dandelion on regularly mowed lawns grow flowers at the lawn height, I find this miraculous! But I don’t use them in our garden tea, too bitter.
Garden tea
There are many edible and medicinal plants and trees. Known ones like rosemary, sage, thyme, yarrow, nettle, St. John’s wort, plantain, chamomilla… Maybe less known plants like lady’s mantle, mallow, comfrey, eupatorium, veronica, calendula, horny goat, roses…
Even less known, tree leaves like walnut, birch, maple, mulberry, blackcurrant and raspberry, many pines, hawthorn -the heart master-, eucalyptus… Barks and roots are often useful too but it’s harming the trees so I don’t practice that. It’s worth googling the trees in your backyard for surprise health benefits.
Many NZ native plants are edible and have traditional medicinal use, hebe for stomach pain, horopito as spice and painkiller, kōwhai for skin, even some ferns for cancer. There is a lot of information here and here.
I go around my garden and harvest any of the above, in small quantities, to create a balanced mix, varying by the seasons. I dry that mix for a few days in open air, then blitz it, store in a jar, and drink our garden tea every afternoon, no packaging, free, always different, good for health, and yesss super tasty!
There are many resources for common plants medicinal knowledge. I enjoy getting to know the plants available in the garden and finding out about their health benefits. If in doubt, check with professional herbalist.
Plants can also be foraged. Always check with owners and be wary of roundup. Only harvest small quantities when there are heaps, leaving plenty for nature to regrow and share with other beings.
Pinus patula needles are edibleHerbs for the garden teaOur Garden Tea <3
Garden lollies!
As I potter around or go for a walk in the garden, and depending on the season, I enjoy:
Folding and eating a dandelion flower and its milky stalk for a rich experience!
Pinching mint, this also controls its spread;
A drop of pine cone sap, a long lasting treat;
Gleaning blackcurrant flowers, blackberries climbing on the glasshouse, a wild strawberry or the sweet base of primula and clover flowers…
Also the unvaluable delight of crunching a cherry tomato, a snow pea or a nasturtium flower as I harvest for lunch or dinner.
As a breath freshener: one leaf of each plant in the herb garden (rosemary, sage, origano etc.) and munch together, wow.
Skin oil
On a nice sunny morning, I take a glass jar and scissors and go around the garden. In the jar go cistus leaves and flowers (good for aging skin), lots of calendula leaves, stalks and flowers and one rose. I chopped these with scissors, then add oils: sunflower, grapeseed, almond or apricot kernel, a bit of jojoba for texture. The closed jar is left to marinate 2 or 3 weeks (longer, it starts to smell like manure!). Then I filter it and put in tainted jars. I add a few drops of essential oils that I like and are good for my dry skin, frankincense, rose, geranium, lavender. There are so many options, check with Auntie Google, but do NOT use citrus for day oils. No chemicals, no plastic, not quite free as the oils can be pricey, but what a satisfying pleasure every morning!
Fresh flowers in a jar on the leftFiltering the marinated flowers after 3 weeksDaily use of garden oil
Garden fertilizers
It’s well known that comfrey and nettle leaves are great fertilizers for the veggie garden. With gloves, I harvest half a bucket of leaves, weigh them down with a stone, cover with water and a lid; Leave to ferment 2-3 weeks, then dilute 1 liter per water can to feed our plants.
Both these rich plants can be used as mulch -before they are in seeds. It has been known since the mid-50’s and popularised by Henry Doubleday in Britain. Together with the compost, they are enough to feed our prolific garden, no chemicals here of course!
And much more…
Many plants are enriching biodiversity in the garden -by definition-. My favourite is the joyful calendula, I wrote a whole post about Calendula wonders!
One calendula plant in each garden bed to attract companion insects and add petals to colour salads.
Instant healer
For bites, stings, cuts, pick three leaves of different plants, hold together, tear the end to access the juice, then rub on the skin.
Favourites: plantain, yarrow, calendula (of course ), pine or cypress…
Or any greens around. Try and refine!
In fact all plants play an enriching role, clover brings nitrogen to other plants, rumex is an interesting addition to dinner greens and food for many insects, lily of the valley keep rabbits at bay, the list goes on…
Weeds are not weeds really. In our garden, weeding is CARING for our plants, making space for their roots and aerating the soil. One important message here is to always check any plant use and benefits before removing it. Spreading very fast or being prickly are good reasons for me and I do remove some plants by hand before they go to seeds. As we like to walk barefoot, we remove thistles even if they are great soil enhancers with their deep tap roots and offer a lot of food to birds. We also remove cleavers after eating young shoots in dinner greens and before they spread up trees. We do also remove a lot of grass when it competes with our plants and trees roots. But apart from that, we leave everything to grow, we welcome and manage them.
Awesome juices
Hawthorns, rosehips and elders tend to grow on their own in our climate. Great! Flowers in spring for beauty and insects, berries later for the birds and us. Every year, I make a batch of elderflower juice, then elderberry juice, hawthorn berries juice and rosehip berries juice. Healthy goodies for the winter.
Simple method
Harvest a large bowl; rinse; in a pan, cover with boiling water, bring to a boil; leave to infuse overnight; next morning, crush with potato masher or moulin, bring the juice back to a boil with a lemon juice and 1 or 2 table spoons of honey; Into jars, fill to the top, lid on and turn upside down. This keeps a year in the pantry.
Again, lots of recipes online, these preserves have been done for generations so just about every family has their own way. I choose simple.
Our “Herbes de Provence”
The “official” mix is thyme, rosemary, summer savoury, origano in equal measure, plus half that measure of basil and bayleaf.
I haven’t managed to grow summer savoury yet so I add sage and lavender to our mix, and follow the rest -approximately.
Contrarily to the garden tea where I blitz the whole branches together, here, I carefully peal the leaves off the stalks or we end up with bits of wood in dishes. Then left to dry, then mixed in the ninja and kept in glass jars. A little bit is enough to light up any dish.
No packaging, mostly free, and healthy. I can’t remember when I last bought some mixed herbs. When I use some at a friend’s place, it tastes very bland.
This harvest of herbs will last a whole year, until next season.
From wellbeing to food production, gardens are source of goodies (and home for many animals families).
Have you ever wondered where goes what you put in the toilet? In most cases, it goes to a septic tank or to the local wastewater treatment plant. The former need regular emptying, the latter is expensive and is often overflowing into rivers or the sea.
There are lots of options online for compost toilets or composting toilet or dry toilet or off-grid toilet or bio-toilet or humanure system. Some are expensive and complex, some look like “normal” toilet, most are interestingly smell free. And they save so much water! And they close the food cycle too!
Lots of system, screen capture from the first “compost toilet” Ecosia image search.
I made one.
My system is simple, in a corner of the garden : a bucket, a toilet seat and lid from Wastebusters, a toilet paper roll in a water tight container, a bag of saw dust.
I love being with the birds under the trees. I use it for number 2s. I love that I don’t use water to flush. I love that my poo becomes fertilization for the garden. Not a waste.
Behind a tree, hidden with a loose fence of cabbage tree leaves
Here it is, a bucket, a toilet seat with lid, a water tight box for a toilet roll and bags of saw dust. Simplissimo.
Like most people, we have toilets inside, so I only use it when I want. In nature.
When the bucket is full, I empty it in a compost bin, nested into straw, covered with straw. It does smell but already hardly looks like what it is.
In summer, a bucket can receive about 30 uses. In winter, only 12 or 15 as it doesn’t decompose as it goes.
I can empty the full bucket in compost bins four or five times as it reduces quickly.
In autumn, I incorporate the content of the compost bin into the hot compost. At this stage, we cannot tell what it is. I make layers of leaves, mulch, a bit of biochar, our cold compost, bokashi, straw, alternating fresh (nitrogen rich) and dry (carbon rich) layers.
The layered compost is watered, often by rain this autumn season, then covered.
Temperature will reach 70 degrees C. It smokes in the morning. All baddies are transformed in goodies by wonderful nature.
In spring, the pile is 1/3 of the initial height, all nicely decomposed, used in the garden.
For commercial use in the garden, a second turn of the compost and another season are practiced, I think. Any precision on that?
Abundant garden potager, fed yearly with our home compost
2 bags of biochar, enough for a year
Even in a small garden, it’s possible (In my previous urban garden, I had hidden it in a corner, with a few planks and a frost cloth!)
I find it rewarding to close the loop!➰🌏💧🐞💖
I hope I’ve inspired you to do your own dry toilet. Post your experience or problems in the Comments below, we may find solutions together.
From iconic Wastebusters shaping Wanaka and New Zealand zerowaste future to Te Kakano reforesting our area with thousands of volunteers for 15 years, to WAO inspiring and empowering the community in yearly Festivals, many ecofriendly businesses, the Regenerative Wanaka Facebook page and the QLDC Climate and diversity action, our active community is loving and caring for the place, often choosing a lifestyle in harmony with nature.
View our Here – Us – Now List here send us a note if you believe your business or organization should be included.
WAO Summit
Coming up in October, WAO Summit is a great inspiring and galvanising festival in Wānaka.
I will talk about: 1- low-carbon, resilient, biodiversity-enhancing lifestyle at household level 2- beyond individual action, how to foster regeneration at district level.
Exciting!
Beautiful Gardens of Wanaka
Our guided garden tours are a great complement to this thriving sustainability culture, showcasing outstanding private gardens, a unique way to share garden beauty and connection with the place and people. Great activity for manuhiri/visitors, our tours also benefit locals presenting local gardeners’ best practices for Central Otago special conditions (frost, heat, draught, rabbits…)
New this season is our educational tour featuring biodiversity attributes and practices to adapt to our current climate crisis era, demonstrating how to regenerate land and gardens in harmony with nature. The property showcased on this tour is an inspiring example of sustainable living with forest and regeneration, food growing, beautiful flowers fostering biodiversity, entirely run without fossil fuels… Come and learn how it’s done.
We love Calendula, the English Marigold. Orange beauty, it brightens the veggie patch, flower gardens and other corners. The Calendula name comes from the word Calendar and I think it is because it flowers every month of the year! Easy to cultivate, we use it as companion plant, in salad, tea and skin ointments.
Culture
Calendula is an annual, rustic plant, forming 40 to 60cm compact plants. Large yellow to orange flowers will bloom all year round and massively from October to frosts.
Seed in autumn or spring in full sun or partially shadowed. They grow anywhere, even in poor soil, even in our dry and frosty climate. After flowering, the heads become seed heads, easy to snap off for esthetics or keep for seeds.
They self seeds easily and can be replanted where wanted. They are also very easy to pull out when we need the space, they won’t come back from the roots.
Companion plant
Calendula attracts and feeds insects when no other flowers are available thereby enhancing biodiversity. They attracts natural predators to aphids (ladybirds, hoverflies…); Their roots hold good nematodes for a healthy soil.
We cultivate calendula in the veggie garden, one plant in each raised bed to attract favourable insects.
They also grow everywhere in our flower beds, filling in the gaps and adding their joyful colours.
How we use it
Comestible plant, we add petals to salads to brighten them up. I add some petals in the “garden tea” but not leaves as I find them quite bitter.
I make a beauty oil: I harvest nice fresh parts of the plant, leaves, flowers and stalks, cut roughly and macerate for several weeks in a variety of oils (sweet almond, grapeseed, avocado, apricot kernel…). Then it is simply strained and funneled into a glass jar with a dropper lid. I used to make a cream with beeswax but it was longer and quite messy so I simplified to oil. Of course we can add essential oils to perfume and help our skin, lavender, geranium or rose. I sometimes mix cistus leaves and flowers into the oil maceration, cistus is good for aging skin!
Medicinal uses
Its Latin name is calendula officinalis and for good reason. My Maria Treben’s Cures book (Steyr: Ennsthaler, 2000) has 2 pages on it. Here is a summary:
Depurative, blood-cleansing, purifying, stimulating for blood, antiseptic. Also the plant of the skin, wonderful for wound healing.
Drink two cups per day of calendula herbal tea to help cure jaundice, wounds, digestive illnesses, intestine or liver or stomach pain, colitis, dropsy, and hematuria. Calendula herbal tea is ideal to help with all viral and bacterial infections. Also effective vermifuge and laxative. Calendula herbal tea applied on eyes helps vision.
Some recent study show good results with cancer, skin cancer, breast cancer, stomach and ulcers. In this case, fresh plant juice is more effective.
In cream or oil ointment, calendula is wonderful for skin. From post-chirurgical wounds to fungus, blues, strains, scars, piles and varicose veins, sunburns, dryness, age pigmentation, also purulent or swelling wounds.
Calendula TM is a powerful antiseptic and helps skin recovery. It can be used on any wounds and post-natal or postoperative situations: infant umbilicus, lesions, sore…
Spring series, 6 Saturday mornings, 4 Nov – 9 December 23
Are you interested in taking care of your property in harmony with nature?
Do you want to regenerate your lifestyle property or garden without fossil fuels?
Do you love a healthy natural life?
Do you ask yourself “what would nature do?”?
Learn more than you expect with garden guide and regenerative lifestyle practitioner, Florence Micoud, in a relaxed atmosphere in the beautiful inspiring garden she is a grateful kaitiaki / caretaker of.
Contact Florence 02102792481 for more info or booking.
6 sessions Saturdays 9am-12 pm starting 4 November
3 to 7 Participants
Price: $240pp – $210pp with Community Service Card or Duet
Location: Namaste Park and Garden, 2 hectares of climate positive lifestyle block run in harmony with nature in Wanaka.
Level: Beginner, intermediate
Bring: Gloves, notebook+pen, jar+box for takeaways
Lawn practice is changing. Public reserves are mowed less often. Many urban garden owners keep an unmowed strip of grass for biodiversity.
Lawns use up to 75% of household water use, they use and leach fertilizer and as all monocultures, lawns are not conducive to biodiversity… Not regenerative!
In the news at the end of October 2022, lawns being a big contributor to climate change – there was a call to dig up some lawn to plant #trees, save on energy (to mow the lawn), on fertilizers and on water.
To regenerate more, why not plant a veggie patch (to reduce food km), mow just a footpath, grow bee friendly flowers… All adds to biodiversity, reduce carbon use and the noise for the neighbours, specially with an electric ride on lawn mower!
Grass roots act like sponge, they absorb water and retain it, reducing flooding and irrigation needs. From The Secret Life of Roots exhibition by US Botanic Garden
We grow a meadow
Here in the park of our property, once a compacted pasture grazed by horses, the grass has been growing for 15 years. It hasn’t been mowed nor cut nor eaten.
We mow footpaths with our new electric ride on lawnmower. Much more silent than the petrol one, clean and free to run, at the same price. All the mowing is done in one hour on a 2.5 hectares property.
Every winter the grass is drying and flattening. Healthy new grass grows through it in spring and summer. And it breaks down in the winter. It is creating a thick mattress. The land is regenerating.
deep brown rich soil,
absorbing rain and keeping moist in summer,
less work, less energy use, less noise,
more and more insects and skinks therefore birds
We observe that our meadow evolves over time. After 15 years, some patches remain green even in the heat of the summer when every unirrigated land is fawn. It’s beautiful and lush. It is a soft big sponge!
While it clearly absorbs carbon and water, as there is a visible improvement of the soil and biodiversity, we have no data.
The Zirkle study says unmowed uneaten grass can absorb from 25gr to 204gr of carbon per m2 per year, depending on conditions, that’s 40000m2 to 4900m2 to absorb a tonne of Carbon per year. That’s quite significant although still very vague.
I am looking for more information on how much carbon does grass capture when left to grow (not grazed, not mowed), decompose and regrow. Let me know!
We love our grass
Grass growing is a natural process creating an abundant source of matter. So we use it.
We keep a row of tall grass between the flower borders and the footpath: it holds the mulch and leaves what the birds usually scatter. Grass grows and hides the rabbit fences.
Grass is great material to layer the compost, to mulch a small footpath or a plant. By breaking down, it enriches the soil.
Grass is not a threat nor a fight, we don’t control grass. We don’t “weed”!
To clear a grassed area to plant a tree or create a new garden, we cut out and remove the top 5cm, full of roots. Then we loosen the soil and pull more roots. And yes, that’s hard work.
Then grass regrows in competition with our plants, so we pull the roots out which aerates the soil as well. This is caring for our plants, never drudgery. I often thank the blades of couch for pointing in the direction of the roots!
It’s best to use a small tool to pull as much root as possible (specially the dandelion roots, that I clean, dry, roast and grind for my “coffee” – but that’s another post!)
We only pull the shoots we recognise, and observe what grows. Some returning annuals are pleasant surprises.
Mulching generously after cleaning an area limits the regrowth. The thickness of mulch makes it easier to pull the grass out the following time.
The first year we open a garden, we remove the grass regrowth three times, the second and third year a couple of times, then once a year. Overtime, the grass doesn’t grow back much.
Grass is left in the background but it’s clean and mulched around the bulbs
I nearly forgot to say we do have lawn around the house! It is nice to sit or lie down. Less than 10% of the land is regularly cut and irrigated. That’s a lot of water saving and reduction in mowing time and noise (and dirty fuel usually but not in our case since our ride-on lawnmower is electric, as all our tools are).
I luckily have a book about having poultry in the backyard so I found out that it likes:
flour-all kinds,
grains -soaked,
a few seeds and
nettles chopped finely
even a bit of coffee marc to boost their health
She eats only near water. The first time she even had to sit in the water to start eating. She would just nibble on the sides of the bowl, not eat inside otherwise. Funny!
She loved it! We were happy witnesses of her meal. She would take some soup in her beak, dip it in the water then swallow it, hastily.
The children also gave out lots of soaked home-bread bits, which the ducks steadily enjoyed of course. They even ate out of the hand.
MAIA
I luckily have a book about having poultry in the backyard so I found out that it likes:
Regenerative Livestyle Blog 