By Isaac Olson, Nursery Near Me
Perth is a good place to garden with children. There is sun for most of the year, winter rain to get things started, and sand that small hands can dig without a fight. The two things that go wrong are the plant list and the timing, and both are easy to fix.
Timing first. Plant in autumn and winter, from April to August, when the rain does the watering and roots are down before the heat. A bed planted in December is a bed a child watches die. Summer is for picking, watering on your roster days and planning the next round.
Start with quick wins, because a four-year-old’s patience runs out in about a fortnight. Cherry tomatoes and strawberries from a punnet in spring give fruit within weeks, and snow peas planted in May can be eaten off the vine on the way to the car. A pot of lemon thyme and a clump of society garlic by the back door are plants children can pick, crush and smell, which is most of the fun.
Then plant the things that take Perth’s heat and sand and keep going when the novelty wears off. Kangaroo paw is Western Australia’s own, and the red and yellow forms flower for months; children can count the honeyeaters that come to them. Pigface is a succulent groundcover that forgives every lapse in watering, spreads across sand, and carries a salty fruit that is fun to try once. Dwarf banksias such as Coastal Cushion and Honey Pots bring the birds in close, as do the smaller grevilleas and bottlebrushes. Emu bush, including the Kalbarri Carpet form, flowers through summer on no water at all. In the shade along the south side of the house, native violet makes a soft green mat that bare feet like.
Give them one long game as well. A lemon or a mandarin in a large pot will fruit for years and teaches the slow kind of looking after; a passionfruit on the fence grows fast enough to measure with a tape every Sunday, then fruits the second summer.
Perth sand is the real enemy, and it is beaten with three jobs children can do. Dig compost and a handful of bentonite clay or a soil improver into each hole, so the sand holds water instead of draining it in minutes. Spread mulch a hand’s depth across the whole bed and keep it off the stems. Water deeply on your roster days, early in the morning, with a watering can each; two deep soaks a week grow deeper roots than a daily sprinkle, and the roster makes the rule for you.
Jobs that belong to the children keep the garden theirs. A watering-can rota with names on the cans. The mulch bucket. The Sunday tape measure on the passionfruit. A bird count from the kitchen window, with a tally on the fridge. Harvesting, which needs no encouragement.
Expect losses and plan for them. Something will be trodden on, over-watered or loved to death, and the lesson is the replanting, not the loss. Keep a couple of spare pots of kangaroo paw or pigface at the side of the house for the gaps.
Everything we deliver in Western Australia is grown by Western Australian nurseries, which is what the state’s quarantine rules require, and it arrives at the door ready to plant: nurserynearme.com.au/pages/plant-delivery-perth.
Isaac Olson is a director of Nursery Near Me, nurserynearme.com.au, an Australian online nursery with no shopfront and no minimum order.
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