For many gardeners, living in a rental home
can really put a dampener on their gardening dreams.
But for young horticulturalist Brooklyn Mabbott,
her rental backyard has been a gateway to living out
both her food production and her community-building ambitions.
I'm in Bowden,
only about 10 minutes away from the busy city streets of Adelaide.
Here, Brooklyn's urban edible garden is part of a network of neighbours
who grow produce, share resources, and learn from one another.
So, tell me about the garden.
I moved in here about four or five years ago.
My friend was living here for a few years,
and I fell in love with the garden.
What prompted you scaling up
and growing food more seriously in your backyard?
Well, I love just being able to come out into my backyard
whenever I'm cooking a meal to grab my ingredients.
It makes so much sense to me.
It's taken a few years,
but the goal was to basically not have to buy any fruit or veg.
We eat from here every day.
Tell me what it was like when you moved in.
So, when I moved in, there was eight raised veggie beds,
so, great infrastructure to start with.
They just needed a little bit of love.
Initially I was growing trees in pots
and potting them up every year,
hoping that one day when I finally settle down
I could put them in the ground,
so I contacted my landlord, and yeah, she gave me the go-ahead,
and I started planting them in-ground
and they've thrived ever since.
So, what have you got growing at the moment?
At the moment we've got tomatoes, basil,
carrots and beetroots,
some heirloom lettuces, spinach, broad beans, broccolis.
And you've also got a share cart out the front?
Yep. That's also a very new thing.
So, I want to be able to put any excess produce out onto the street
for anyone in the community to grab.
Brooklyn grow most of her crops from seeds,
and she's worked up
her own specifically designed polytunnel device for propagation.
Here I've got two small polytunnels
that are hooked up with misters.
They're set to a timer.
And I've also just started using a propagation heat mat as well.
And this is a bit of a sun trap too, isn't it?
So the position of this is really important.
Yeah. Well, I didn't really have a use for my driveway anyway.
And it does some thermal-mass properties.
So, the sun will hit the concrete
and it will warm up throughout the day.
So, what have you got growing here?
Three different varieties of lettuces.
I've got three different kales -
I've got the 'Red Russian' kale and 'Black Magic' kale.
I've got spring onions.
And we've got some broccolis.
I have to shuffle them around as I only have one heat mat,
but you can see here the difference between...
The ones that are on the heat mat germinated straightaway
and the cells that are off the heat mat are really slow in comparison.
So, these tomatoes look fantastic.
I planted these in late January this year
and I've just been really carefully trellissing them ever since.
I prune off any diseased leaves
and just give them a lot of love and a bit of fertiliser along the way.
They're looking amazing, and I bet they taste great.
They're tasting really good, yeah.
Let's check out those carrots! Alright.
Let's give it a go.
Oh, look at that!
A beautiful bunch. Yeah.
Pretty nice. Oh, they even smell good.
Now, this is your in-ground veggie bed.
But it's only fairly new?
Well, the chickens prepared it for me.
Ah!
Yeah, I had them living in here for about four years
before I decided to turn this into a market garden.
So, the soil has a lot of nitrogen already.
And did you prepare it in any specific way?
I tried the hugelkultur method.
So, I dug down some big trenches
and layered them with my fruit tree prunings,
some leaves and compost,
and then mounded them up.
Everything's so abundant, so it's working well.
Yeah. I love growing in rows.
Brooklyn's garden isn't the only one blossoming
in this little corner of Adelaide.
On her street is a close-knit group of gardening friends,
which includes Brooklyn's neighbour Paul.
The friends swap produce from each other's gardens
and have joined together to share resources.
Together, they have also created the Mudge Way Community Garden.
It's really inspiring.
I see that people get a lot out of it.
Every time I invite them down, they say,
"Oh, I really loved getting my hands dirty.
"I really needed to get into my garden."
I get the joy of sharing it.
I also get to let go a little bit
and let other people have some creative input.
Sometimes I walk down and there's new things planted
and it's just really nice to see
people taking some autonomy over this shared garden.
PAUL: I like to garden with other people
and my garden doesn't have much sun access anymore.
It's really good to watch the things grow
that I can't get growing in my yard.
So, at the moment we've got a few different vegetables.
Lots of spinach. We've got broad beans growing.
And we've also got some baby broccolis.
We've got one bed which is dedicated to native foods,
so we've got the native river mint,
which is great in a cup of tea.
And we've also got some muntries
and some native parsley.
That community spirit is really at the heart
of what Brooklyn loves about gardening,
and it's something that,
as community gardens pop up around the country,
more people, whether they're renters,
live in apartments or anywhere else,
are getting the chance to experience.
It absolutely does grow community.
Everyone loves coming down and getting dirty
and getting the forks and the mulch, yeah.
So, what advice would you have for people that are renting?
I'd say go for it, grow your own food.
We eat like kings here.
We go out every day and just get the tastiest produce.
You can grow in any backyard.