Growing Good Health

According to garden therapy, a longer and leaner life is right under your feet. All you need to do is step outside.

- Julia Bourne

It has been said that in order to discover your true passion and meaning in life, you should try to recall how you spent your time when you were 11 years old. At that age, you had the independence to make your own choices about your activities, before social and family expectations directed you towards good grades and life skills.

Indoors as an 11-year-old, I loved to be engaged with words, shapes and colours, but my greatest joy was to be outside in the garden or nearby parks, revelling in the wonder of nature. I loved identifying a tree from its leaf and seeing how the leaf’s shape often resembled the shape of the full-grown tree; watching the development of a tadpole into a frog; moulding a handful of clay soil into shapes, like with plasticine. It’s no surprise that as an adult I became a passionate gardener.

The backyard

When the house next door to my current home was sold and the demolition began, I was sad to witness the destruction of what had been home to many people over the course of 80 years. But one morning I left home for a few hours and returned to find the neighbouring garden, with its decades’ worth of trees and plants, had also been destroyed. I felt as bereft as if a death had occurred.

Three years later, a “French provincial” mansion occupies nearly the whole block, with the exception of what Melbourne University architecture professor Philip Goad calls “a small cemetery at the front”. How apt that is, as a memorial to the traditional backyard where children played, families relaxed, neighbours interacted and wildlife thrived.

This “disturbing trend where outdoor amenities have all but disappeared” was highlighted by Tony Hall in his book