5. Good Organic Gardening - September-October 2016 AvxHome.in

GARDENING FOLK | David & Vivienne Warland
Vegetarians David and Vivienne and
grandson Toby live on their produce
on
golden
plains
A century after Victoria’s gold rush, this land is still producing
riches of a more sustaining — and sustainable — kind
Words & photos Jana Holmer
Staffordshire Reef, like much of the
Golden Plains around Ballarat, was a
goldfield for half a century after miners
discovered the precious metal there
in 1858. In the following years the population
swelled to 293 but by 1933 had declined to a
tenth of that number.
David and Vivienne Warland have struck
it rich in a different way in Staffordshire Reef.
With their grandson Toby, they live on 200
acres (81 ha) of which a quarter of an acre
comprises fruit trees and a vegetable garden,
all organically grown.
Both David and Vivienne are former
age-care nurses, though David learned
landscaping and tree planting while working
as a gardener at a school. In 1995 he started
a horticultural course at Ballarat’s Botanical
Gardens, on Lake Wendouree.
While David was a city boy — though he
remembers his father growing plums, pears
and apples — Vivienne has spent most of her
life in the country. Her mother had milking
cows and chooks as “the shops were 20 miles
away”. Her dad and uncle went fishing and
hunted rabbits.
“With the vegetables they grew they were
pretty self-sufficient,” she recalls. “They had
to be. There was a baker that would come
around in a van and a butcher on horse and
cart that would deliver meat. Earlier than that,
during the Depression, when my grandmother
was much younger, they had only what they
could catch and grow.
“My mother said I’d pull an onion out
of the ground when I was a baby crawling
around. This was my very first experience
in gardening.”
Vivienne remembers as a teenager
watching her father Les grow vegetables
— carrots, onions, lettuce, tomatoes and
strawberries — as well as apple and pear
trees. Family, friends and visitors would all
pitch in to pod his green peas.
The land
As vegetarians who eat all their own produce,
it comes as no surprise that David and
Vivienne are committed organic gardeners.
David is no fan of chemicals — he even
worries about the fallout from aeroplane
chemtrails leaching into the soil — so the
couple use their own compost, rock dust,
sheep manure and seaweed on the garden.
“We buy seaweed in a bottle and apply it
to all the vegetables and fruit trees every two
weeks in the growing period,” he adds.
As for pest control, “Vivienne goes
around at night and stomps on all the snails,
36 | Good Organic Gardening