I paid a visit to Adrienne's garden on Monday where she is living in Northcote near the primary school, she has the basement bottom of a unit and the landlord has let her have the sloping backyard, to which she has made a wildflower garden at the base of the driveway, a vege and herb patch in pots on the sunny northern side, and a grapevine and choko vine framing the boundaries.
Since she is 80 years old and living on her own I find this impressive that she is still gardening and so enthusiastic about plants. She has plans for the corner of the yard that slopes down toward the fence to have a banana grove, and while wild buttercups has clothed every other part at least she does not have to bother with a noisy lawnmower at the back (it would probably roll down the hill).
Then we visited Northcote Library which I had never been to before, which has a little community led garden in a sunny alcove facing north, with a few rasied beds, citrus, a compost bin and worm farm, to which she sometimes gives workshops and talks. She also wanted to show me Smith's bush, which is a little reserve right in the middle of Northcote, of kahikatea and a stream beside a boardwalk through native 'virgin' forest.
She then gifted me a whole lot of Organic NZ magazines. I think she is a bit of an evangelist for gardening as she had suffered a lot of mental illness in the past and had found it grounding or therapeutic to garden organically. I don't think it is too dissimilar to how many people get into gardening although some has said 'gardening is the gateway drug' - don't think that means to growing pot though!
There is actually a book called 'Grow your own drugs' though I thought many people had cottoned on to that but never took it seriously. Of course I myself dabbled in herbs, and I really do believe plants have super healing powers if not magic, so maybe I'm just as nutty.
I am now reading Seven Flowers That Changed the World.
I better get on to it because Karyn and I are recording two episodes on the topic of world changing plants. I will have a long list.
