From Flower Beds to Feathered Friends | A Chat with Emily Todd

A Chat with Emily Todd

BIO: Emily is a 26 year old garden lover and horticulture student from Melbournes outer east. Em grows flowers and tends a small kitchen garden, sharing the joy of gardening online. A creative soul and animal lover, she enjoys cooking, painting and pottering in the garden.

Emily's location: Yarra Valley, VIC

To learn more about Em:
Instagram: @emtoddx
TikTok: @emtoddxx

More about this episode:

In this episode of How I Grow, Nat sits down with Emily, a 26 year old creative from the Yarra Valley who has turned her 500m2 block into a blooming sanctuary. Em shares how her obsession with plants started at a young age by her mother’s side, making mud cakes and tucking flowers into her hair, a childhood spark that eventually led her to further her knowledge with growing flowers and vegetables from scratch. From her front yard filled with dreamy roses, poppies and foxgloves to a backyard "chaos" of pumpkins rambling over her chicken coop, Em’s story is a beautiful look at how she’s teaching herself and others to get out into their gardens and create. Em tells us about her up's and down's in the garden, including losing her beloved chickens to a fox last November.

Beyond the garden beds, Emily speaks from the heart about how digging in the dirt has become her "free therapy". She describes the pure magic of watching a tiny seed transform into a towering flower and how that process has taught her a level of patience she never had before. Whether she's pickling homegrown cauliflower or dreaming up new garden designs to help others start their own garden spaces, Em’s approach is all about slowing down and finding purpose in the soil. It’s a refreshing reminder that you don't need acreage to create a life full of color. Sometimes, all you need is a bit of trial and error and a genuine love for the "petals and poultry" lifestyle.

'How I Grow' is produced by The Seed Collection Pty Ltd. 
Find out more about us here: www.theseedcollection.com.au

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

You're listening to How I Grow, a podcast by the Seed Collection. I'm your host, Nat Buckley, and today we're joined by Emily, a 26-year-old gardener and creative living in Victoria's Yarra Valley. Em grew up gardening alongside her mum, taking in a wealth of knowledge and inspiration, which she puts into practice today in her own garden. From flowers to her small kitchen garden, she spends her time sharing the true joy of gardening with others online. In this episode, we'll be talking about cottage gardens, growing vegetables, managing pests, and keeping chickens. We also chat about Em's deep love of gardening and how beneficial it is for her mental health and also her exciting plans for the future. Hi Em, welcome to the podcast and thank you so much for joining us today. Hi Nat, thanks for having me. I'm really excited to chat to you guys. Now I'm really interested to know more about your gardening journey and I guess what sort of inspired you to start gardening and yeah, just give us a little bit more about your journey.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

I think it started when I was a little girl. I'm really lucky to have a mum who is an incredible gardener. She still is to this day. So I grew up with her just always being in the garden, growing so many different types of flowers. Every flower you could possibly imagine, actually, her garden was just a jungle filled with so much colour and life to it. So as a little girl, I just was always outside with her picking flowers. We'd put them in my hair, I'd make little cakes out of them, like mud cakes and things like that. Um, so I really enjoyed that as a little girl and had I think that's where the inspiration started. Um, as I got older, I obviously just always had loved flowers. Um, and it wasn't until my best friend actually opened up a florist shop. Um, and I started helping her out and cleaning the flowers and just helping her with weddings and all of that type of stuff. And yeah, we just kind of also her just became obsessed with flowers and different flowers and where they've come from and how to grow them and things like that. And all of my friends started noticing that I, yeah, was just obsessed with it, and it's kind of all that I spoke about. Um, and they started saying, Oh, you should do floristry or you should start your own thing up, and I was like, mm-hmm and humming and aring about it. And I actually went to TAFE for like a day to do floristry, but I was like, mm-hmm, this isn't this isn't the right thing. And I kind of realized that I enjoy learning how to grow them from scratch in a garden rather than just like having them there and arranging them. So I was more fascinated with kind of learning how to grow them and whether that was seed or bulbs or anything. So I guess that's kind of where it started. And I it wasn't until I moved out of home with my partner we bought our first house, is where it kind of fully started, when I could have my own garden and yeah, grow whatever I wanted and wherever I wanted. So yeah, I guess it that's kind of the journey to where I am now.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Lovely. And I guess how old were you when you got you bought your first home? And I guess that's sort of when your gardening journey probably did start taking off when you had your own space to start planting and planning. Um, I was quite young.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

I think I was 22 or 23, which I think is quite young to get into gardening fully, and that's all I was thinking about at the time. Like on weekends, all my friends would be going out, but I'm just like, no, I want to go out in my garden or go to a nursery and plant vegetables and things like that. Um, so yeah, it started then, but in saying that, I have learnt so much from that stage to now. Like you asked me questions about my garden when I was 22, I knew nothing and I didn't even know how to plant things in the right soil. I was just chucking random compost bits and soil from the garden into a pot, not actually potting mix. So I've learnt a lot since then, and it's been really good.

SPEAKER_00 4:50

And whereabouts are you located? So obviously you grew up spending a lot of time in your mum's garden and then moved on to yours. Is it in roughly the same area and like the same kind of growing habits?

SPEAKER_01 5:03

So my mum's home was in suburbia, she was kind of in a city. So we've moved out to the Yarra Valley, um, which we love, and it's also been really great because they have lots of open gardens in the area that we go to on weekends as well. And it's just so nice because I feel like everyone kind of around us is into the same thing as well. We have so many older ladies that grow roses on our street, and people are just interested in gardens and things like that where we live. So it's so nice to be able to make friends with our neighbours who are also growing foxgloves or sunflowers along their driveway. Climate-wise, I'm not sure. I know in winter it gets very, very cold where we are, so um lots gets burnt by the frost, and just yeah, it's hard in winter, we can't really grow much, and I had a lot of damage to a few things last winter, but yeah, it's a beautiful place to live. We really enjoy living where we are. Eventually, we want to even move further into the Yarra Valley and get some acreage and hopefully get some flower rose going and a mini little micro flower farm, but um just for fun, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 6:26

But yeah, that's the plan. Yeah, lovely. It all sounds like it's all going in the right direction. Now, can you give us a sort of run through of your garden and I guess what sort of style it is and sort of what you're planting and give us sort of like a a spoken to, I guess, because obviously we're on a podcast. We can't really see it right now. We will pop up some links and everything, but yeah, give if you could give everybody sort of like an overview of what your garden is like and how you like to plant your garden. For sure.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

So I think we're under just a 500 square meter block, so it's not very big at all. It's flat, it has no trees, which is so sad. Um, my dream was to just create a big cottage garden. Our house is actually an old weatherboard cottage that had been restored. Um, it's quite modern now, so it's sad that it's lost some of those features that we loved. We didn't renovate it, we bought it renovated. But anyway, I just wanted to plant an incredible cottage garden and have so many colours and just a whimsical kind of dreamy feel, um, kind of like a little fairy garden. So I've cut a huge garden bed at the front of the house as you enter in, and it's got a small tree there, which is a crepe myrtle at the moment. It's a white one, and in that garden bed we have so much growing. I can't even remember, but we had the most amazing foxgloves last year. Um, pinks and purples and whites and that champagne y colour. It it was actually just spectacular looking at it from the straight in. We also had poppies, I think they were just the Iceland ones, but I think that they're one of my favourite things to grow. And once again, they just made the home look so whimsical and magical. We had selvias and so many roses. I have a small collection of David Austen roses. I think Jubilee was at the front, Jubilee Celebration. We had Emily Bronte, which my mum actually gifted to me, so that was really nice to have that in the garden as well. Um, I also had stock and snap dragons and I don't know, so many things. And I think that's what makes it special. You kind of can't really see what's growing in the garden until you get there closely and you look through it all and you just find a new flower coming up. And each week it would actually be so exciting to just walk up to the garden and see what's blooming because you know sometimes I just throw seeds and I'm not sure what's actually going to come up, and one week later there's new things coming up, and you're like, oh, what's this? But yeah, it's it's just kind of a bit of everything. I was really lucky this year. It was my first year planting echinaceas, and I've seen it in so many beautiful cottage gardens and naturalistic gardens as well. And I'd always wonder, how are these people growing these? Because I've just found it so hard to grow, especially from seed, it's kind of impossible where I am, but so hard to grow in my garden. And this year I bought a small little seedling from the nursery, and it just took off. I have so many flowers, and it grew quite tall as well in its first year, so that was really exciting. Um, sorry, I'm rambling on a bit.

SPEAKER_00 10:13

No, it all sounds absolutely amazing, and I have actually seen photos as we do follow along on Instagram and a little bit on TikTok too, and I just can't wait for everybody to have a look at your garden because it is honestly just it's phenomenal, and your flowers are so beautiful. Thanks, Matt. That's okay. And I guess as well, the way that you garden at your home, do you take a lot of inspiration from your mum's flower garden? I think so.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

Um, actually, 100% I would say our gardens are very similar. Hers is just a lot bigger, but she's taught me everything that I know. Her advice has always been great. Whenever I have a question, I don't even really go to Google or Chat GPT. I go to my mum and I'll give her a call and ask her, what's happening with this, or what's wrong with this plant, or what can I do to fix this, or can I move this rose yet? So she's just my go-to person whenever I have any flower or plant questions, which is great. But I take a lot of inspiration from everywhere, to be honest. Um, even on our nightly walks, when we walk our dog, we'll go past houses and they might be growing something, and I'll just be like, oh, I should grow that. There's a house uh near us that we pass sometimes, and they have this really beautiful, uh, I think it's an emu wire fence, and you can see the Californian poppies at the bottom just kind of seeping through, and it just looks so pretty. And I think they mixed it with some cosmos and poppies as well, and I was like, that's beautiful, like I want to do that at my house. So it's kind of houses surrounding me. I just see things and I get inspired. And I think in the future I just want to go to more open gardens as well to be able to see some of these gardeners and horticulturists and landscape designers and what they do in person. So yeah, I think I just take a lot of inspiration from around me. I really enjoy seeing things in person and going on walks past that house that I know has a beautiful garden, and yeah, that just makes me so inspired.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

Yeah, and I think that is the only way to really gain that sort of inspiration is from seeing it in real life and seeing how it sits and everything in a garden, plants, flowers, and through the seasons as well. You were talking earlier about obviously your love for flowers, and you went to TAFE for one day, but I do know that you are going to TAFE now for more than one day. Um can you tell us a little bit more about what you're currently studying?

SPEAKER_01 13:00

So this year I made a deal with myself that I was gonna get out of my comfort zone and do some things that I've always wanted to do. And the first one was to go and study horticulture. So I have done that, and I've been there for over a month now, and I'm enjoying it. I don't dread it. I enjoy going to class and soaking up all and everything that I'm learning. So, yes, it's been longer than one day.

SPEAKER_00 13:29

I love that. And I guess as well, you know, you spend a lot of time in the garden and you spend a lot of your weekends in the garden and your whole life is basically flowers and garden. Is there anything that you're thinking you're wanting to do after you've finished your studies in horticulture?

SPEAKER_01 13:47

Yes. There's so much I want to do, but I think the main thing is what I've always wanted to do is to help people have a garden pretty much. I get so many questions, especially online, and even friends and family. How do I do this? Oh, I wish I could grow this, I wish I could have a garden when anyone can truly have a garden. Um, so I guess the plan is to be a garden consultant or a garden designer. So I want to just start a small little business helping people design little gardens and help them know what to grow, where to grow, how to grow it, and basically just be alongside them to guide them to have a beautiful garden as well. So it's still kind of in the brainstorming phase, but I think that that's the direction I want to go. But you know, a year can change, and I'm not 100%, you know, forcing anything. I'm letting it be what it will be.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

Um, but yes. Which I think is very true to gardening as well, just letting it evolve and seeing where it goes and where it grows. Exactly right. Yeah. And I think, you know, when you have these passions for such a long time, like you started gardening when you were, was it 22? Properly, um, 22, I did.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

Um before that at home, maybe occasionally when I was living with my parents. But yeah, I would say from 22 onwards is when the obsession started.

SPEAKER_00 15:29

Yeah, definitely. So I feel like it's always been a consistent theme for you. And it yeah, it will evolve to wherever you want to take it, which is so exciting. And I I think that helping other people achieve gardens and you know, you don't have acreage, you're on a, as you said, like a 500 square meter block and you have a beautiful garden front and back. We haven't actually gotten to the backyard yet. But yeah, I think that's such a wonderful plan.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

Yeah, I hope so. I'm really looking forward to this next stage of I guess my life and doing something that I'm truly passionate about because I feel like I've dabbled in so many things, and it feels really good to find that one thing that you just love.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

Yeah, I definitely agree there. So we kind of just touched on the fact that we've spoken about your front yard. Can you give us a little insight into your backyard?

SPEAKER_01 16:23

So our backyard is quite smaller than our front, but that's okay because we make things work, and that doesn't mean we can't plant anything. We have a beautiful deck that we put in, um, and I have some pots with roses that I'm training to creep up kind of the veranda part, which is really beautiful, and we have a fire pit and then some plants around that, just kind of some rosemaries and salvias. Um, and in the early spring we have daffodils and alliums that pop up, so it's really beautiful. And around the other side of the house, the backyard kind of wraps around the house. We have a small little veggie garden, but it's small, but we get a lot of stuff from it. So yeah, it's just chaotic, but I kind of love the chaos of a veggie garden and jumping in and finding vegetables pretty much. Um but in that veggie garden I'm also growing a lot of dahlias, not too many, but it's still I can still cut them and bring them inside and put them in a vase. Next to that we have my empty chicken coop.

SPEAKER_00 17:41

Oh I went silent for a second again. Um we're not laughing, but um yes, Em. We're laughing out of sadness. I think that um it's up to you whether you'd like to talk about your chicken coop, Em. I know I've obviously followed your journey with your garden, which includes your chickens. So yeah, if you'd like to talk about them, and I think it's good though, because you know, circle of life, but also I feel like a lot of people uh have had this same issue with a particular pest. So if you'd like to yeah, if you want to if you feel like you want to talk about it, let us let us know.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

So we had um five beautiful chickens and three baby chicks, and for anyone who knows me knows there's gardening and then there's my chickens. Like I love my chickens, and I think any chicken owner would agree. So we had them, I think, for about two years, and everything was going great. We had no issues with anything, they were the healthiest girls in the world and got so many eggs, and it was just amazing. Um, unfortunately, with chickens comes foxes. So our coop was actually very secure, and I think if you're ever looking to get chickens, please secure your coops even if you think they're secure. So just put that extra kind of help into it because foxes are so smart and it doesn't take much for them to get inside that coop. Sadly, my dog actually had pushed on our I guess it was like a a strong, it was a strong kind of mesh wire. It wasn't chicken wire. Don't use chicken wire. It's the foxes will just smash right through it, but kind of one of the screws at the bottom came a bit loose, and there was about a three-centimeter gap between the timber and this mesh, and that's all it took for the fox to kind of push right through and get in and just kill all my chickens, which is awful. Like it's just the most awful thing ever because foxes just leave the mess there, but I was absolutely devastated. Um, this happened I think late November 2025, and I've just been traumatized since, and I actually haven't gotten any more chickens because I'm so scared that it will happen again. But I've just been getting Sam, my partner, to kind of slowly chip away at the coop, and we've put so many layers of really, really strong mesh sheets. I don't even know what they are, but yeah, we've done quite a bit of work to it. Um, so I guess when I'm ready I'll get some more, but we are going away, so I think when I'm back we'll make that decision. But it is very sad when you when you lose pets, and it's really not nice um to wake up to that.

SPEAKER_00 20:54

Yeah, and I'm really sorry to hear that, Em. And yeah, I think it does take time after having chickens to sort of get the courage back when you have foxes. I mean, when the time is right, you know, there's other um perds as well, like ducks, which I would love duck. A little duck and um chicken combo would be lovely as well, and really good eggs. So you were talking about your veggie patch before, and you're saying it's not very big, but at the moment, what have you been growing and what are you finding is growing well?

SPEAKER_01 21:28

So we have two little they're not little, but they're not huge, medium-sized raised beds. They're kind of shoved into the corner, but we still get a lot of produce. So at the moment we have lots of zucchinis, lots of pumpkins, I have lots of herbs as well, all the herbs really, and tomatoes. But this year I actually grew my tomatoes in pots, which has been going really good, and I've actually gotten a lot of fruit from it. And I would say this is the first successful year of growing tomatoes for me because I just had such a bad pest problem, especially with the birds as well. And even when I did net them, they'd still they'd still get to them somehow. So we have that. And going back to the pumpkins, I think we have three varieties growing. And this is actually my first year growing pumpkins. Because they do need a lot of space, but I've found that they've just made their own space. They're growing all over our chicken coop, which has been really good actually. It's kind of acted as a trellis. The pumpkins are essentially hanging from the coop and it's keeping them off the ground, which has been good. Um, and no pests have gotten into them. And yeah, it's exciting watching them grow every day, and they're just getting bigger and bigger. Um, what else am I growing? I think that's it at the moment. Oh, and cucumbers, I forgot. Um, so they're just mixed and twined through the zucchinis. So sometimes I don't know what's what, but yeah, lots of zucchinis, cucumbers, pumpkins, tomatoes, and then through that we have um the dahlias growing.

SPEAKER_00 23:11

So I've actually just weaved them through all of this chaos as well. And Em has actually sent us some photos, which I will attach to the article and with the podcast, so you can see it's actually quite beautiful, your garden, and you wouldn't think that it was in such a small area, especially when you've got pumpkins growing up at chicken coot. Um, what sort of pests do you usually get in your garden? Could mention some pests. So what sort of pests are we talking? Caterpillars.

SPEAKER_01 23:42

Um so annoying, and I just feel so sad moving them because I think they're so cute, and I try not to kill them. And my mum's like, kill them, no. Um, so lots of caterpillars, especially when we had all the broccoli and um cauliflowers in, they just loved them. Um another one is cockatoos. So the cockatoos and king parrots just love everything. And I think they were getting into my tomatoes as spell a bit um two seasons ago or so, but they also love the sunflowers. We're also going sunflowers in this um raised garden bed, so I think it's just attracting all the birds, which is fine. Like I really do love waking up and seeing them there, but not when they start eating my vegetables. Other than that, it's actually not bad. I don't really have anything else eating anything. It's just the birds and the caterpillars, which I'm really lucky with.

SPEAKER_00 24:47

And do you have any plans? Obviously, we're coming to the end of the season now. Do you have any plans um for what you might want to plant in your raised boxes over the autumn and winter period?

SPEAKER_01 24:59

I think so. Last season I actually did a lot of flowers. Um, so this veggie garden alternates between a flower patch and a veggie patch. So last season I did lots of renunculas, um, anemones, we had poppies as well. What else? I think I had tulips and daffodils in that area, and also stock and snapdragons, and I actually forgot how beautiful stock is. I feel like it is such an underrated flower. We had really tall ones that were like a lilacy purple and also a deep purple and just standard white, but they are just such a beautiful flower, and I would cut them and put them inside in vases as well, and I think I put a bucket out at my gate for neighbours to come and take um or people walking by. But yeah, I just had a lot of stock in there, but also back to the veggies. We had um cauliflower and broccoli and beans and I don't know, lots of things. But this year I think I'll do similar. Um what else? I think I'm trying to think what I usually plant this time of the year for my autumn winter veggies, but definitely lots of flowers. It's funny every year I say, okay, I'm gonna plant so many, so I get an abundance of flowers, and I do that, and then I'm like, wait, no, I need more. So I think I'll do flowers this year, also like cornflowers, and I think straw flowers are sewed in the autumn. They're a really good one.

SPEAKER_00 26:45

Yeah. I was going to ask, um, with your broccoli and cauliflower, did you find that it grew well? Because I always have problems with getting um big heads of broccoli and cauliflower. Do you find that it grows well when you grow it?

SPEAKER_01 26:57

Uh, broccoli uh two seasons ago, my veggie garden was actually in a different spot in the garden. It grew amazing. I had no problems growing it. It actually got a massive head on it and we ate it. Um, I think we got about seven, which is a lot for like my garden. Cauliflower this year did great as well, which was surprising because I just find it's such a slow grower. It didn't get its head until really, really late in the season. Um, and I was beginning to think, oh, I don't think this is going to work. But towards the end of the season, the head developed, and then day by day it just got bigger and bigger, and we actually pickled them in jars, which was really yum. Um, and I recommend doing that. And then for the rest of it, we just would roast them for dinner, and it was really great. Yum, that actually sounds really good pickling it. Yeah, it's really good. I feel like people forget about cauliflower and that you can pickle it, and it's really yummy.

SPEAKER_00 28:05

And have you ever pickled anything else? Like would you, yeah, would you usually pickle things or is that like a first sort of go or I've always wanted to, and I say every year that I'm going to do it.

SPEAKER_01 28:18

So that was the first time that I pickled the cauliflower, but I actually have so many zucchinis and we're kind of over roasting them. So I think that I'm going to pickle the zucchinis. Um, when we're in Tassie, we went to a farmer's market and we actually bought some pickled zucchinis, and they were the yummiest thing ever. Um, there was dill and all these yummy things inside it. So I think that's the plan with the abundance of zucchinis that we have. But yeah, I'd love to obviously pickle carrots and all of that too. But I've actually been really unlucky with carrots and never really successfully grown big juicy carrots. They've always just been miniature little twigs, really. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:08

Yeah, I can relate. I I think you and I, we are very good at growing flowers. Yes. Um, and vegetables, I think it really takes a lot of trial and error. And I think some people get really lucky, but it's something I would like to work more on myself. I'm not sure about you. No, 100%.

SPEAKER_01 29:28

I have never been great with the vegetable side, but I don't know if that's because I'm not as passionate as what I am with the flowers. So who knows?

SPEAKER_00 29:38

Yeah, I think us growing our above-ground things like cucumbers, zucchinis, tomatoes, and pumpkins is probably safer for everybody.

SPEAKER_01 29:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 29:47

Um and so we're talking about, you know, pickling. Do you cook much?

SPEAKER_01 29:53

Yeah, I love cooking. And I think that was one of the main reasons why I really wanted a veggie garden. So that when we had people over for dinner or lunch or whenever I could say, Oh, this is grown in the garden. And you know, when we had our chicken eggs, I would be making homemade pasta with the eggs, and then we'd make a pesto sauce with the basil from the garden, and then I'd roast tomatoes, and the tomatoes were from the garden, so everything was essentially from our tiny little garden. And there was just something about that, like I just loved being able to do that for people, and it was so yummy, and I felt so proud. Like, we grew this and this is from our garden, but yeah, I really love cooking, and I think anyone who enjoys cooking has to have a veggie garden, or if you don't have enough room, you can grow things on your balcony and pots, you know, there's always room to grow something.

SPEAKER_00 30:52

Yeah, definitely. And it is so rewarding. And even just growing your own herbs and having unique herbs that you don't really get at the shops as well, is really good for cooking. So, you know, yeah, as you said, balconies, herbs, like herbs make such a big difference in food. And yeah, if you don't want to grow veggies, growing herbs is just as good in the kitchen. Agreed. I agree with that too. So if we touch back on, I guess, with your future planning and starting to think about doing garden consulting possibly in the future, or you know, wherever your business or career might take you, is there a sort of particular garden style that you kind of envision loosely that you'd want to explore? Or, you know, when helping people on their gardening journey, what sort of garden designs do you think you'd like to help people implement, or is it kind of loose? Like, how do you how is it looking in your brain right now?

SPEAKER_01 31:55

I think I'll always be so in love with cottage gardens. It's what I have now and it's what I love the most. So I think anyone that will come to me will be wanting that as well. I just love the idea of having and growing so many flowers. I think they bring so much joy to yourself and also others because you can cut them, you can gift them to people, and I really love that ritual about gardening and growing flowers. I think it's it just makes it even more rewarding and you can share the love with everyone and everything that you've grown. Um, so I definitely think it will be cottage gardens and helping people achieve that and grow beautiful, colourful flowers. But then again, I don't want to limit myself and just stay in one box. Um, it's good to change and it's good to have new ideas or try new things. So we'll just see where it takes me. But at the moment, I think we'll start with cottage gardens. And if I find myself leaning into something else, that's fine. Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_00 33:06

And I guess, you know, we're so lucky now to have things like Pinterest and Instagram. Are there any garden designers or landscape designers that inspire you and that you take inspiration from?

SPEAKER_01 33:20

So I love Ashley James gardens. So he really focuses on cottage gardens and also kitchen gardens, I would say, as well. He's done some beautiful projects all over Melbourne, and I just love everything that he does, and I love how he incorporates things like foxgloves and poppies and dahlias all through the gardens, and they're so magical and whimsical, and I just love it. He's such a big inspiration, and I honestly aspire to be like him. Um, and it's also really, really refreshing seeing a man growing flowers because honestly, I don't see that often, and I just love, love seeing it, and he cuts them as well and makes little jars with little posies and things of his own garden. And I think more guys should start growing flowers and buying flowers for for themselves. It's such a nice ritual and really beautiful to see. Um, but yes, I love Ashley James, and I also love Tim Pilgrim, which he's more naturalistic, but he does grow lots of beautiful flowers as well, and his colour palettes are beautiful. Um he has done this amazing project in out Mount Macedenway. It could even be pushing Dalesford, yeah. It's out there somewhere, it's a little cottage. Yeah, the cottage, and he has tulips and alliums, and I think it's called oak, something oak cottage, but it's just stunning. Um, there is a beautiful oak tree, and they've kind of created this garden surrounding the oak tree, and it's just spectacular, and the colour palette is per like waves of purples and greens and pinks and like silvery undertones. It's just a work of art. Um, so he is a big inspiration, and I love everything that he does as well. Do you have his recent book that came out? Yeah, I actually bought his book, and it's really educational as well. There's lots about the soil and growing things, so it's a great book. Everyone should buy that. Um it's also beautiful and it looks so nice on a coffee table, and yeah, it's a beautiful book, and it's got all his projects in there as well. So I love flicking through that for inspiration.

SPEAKER_00 35:50

So we've talked about a lot of the things that have gone right in your garden, Em, and unfortunately a couple things that haven't. Um, sorry, chickens. But are there any particular things that stand out that you've learnt or particular things that haven't worked out how you thought um would in the garden, and I guess how you've sort of progressed from that?

SPEAKER_01 36:13

I think the biggest one would be soil, just kind of educating myself around soil and getting the soil right. In order to have a beautiful garden and grow flowers, you just need to get that soil right. And honestly, our house was there was a lot of troubles with the soil because number one, we cut out new garden beds where the original grass was. Um, and sadly, when they renovated our house, they chucked all the old bricks and concrete and just debris of the house basically underneath a thin layer of soil that they had put. Um so whenever we'd dig it, just we'd find, you know, old cans and rubbish pretty much. So we had to really dig it all up and loosen it up, and also it was really clay heavy as well as all this crap and concrete. So dug it all up, turned it over. We added so much compost and manure and everything really, and just worked on it for a while before we even planted anything. So getting that right was a big challenge. But now it's just thriving. There are spots in the garden where our neighbours actually have trees and the roots are coming underneath the fence, and it's just sucking all the life and nutrients from the soil. So things aren't really growing well, and I can't really grow many flowers in those spots. So that's why we do have hardy things like rosemary and lambs here and things that just are growing quite easily. Um, but they still look beautiful. Um, I find the selvia actually does well in some drier spots of the garden. But yeah, like they are really important lessons that I've learnt. 22-year-old me, when I had first just moved in, like I said earlier, had no idea about soil, and I just thought you could take soil from the garden and put it in a pot and grow something. But we've learned a lot. Um so yeah, I just think soil is has to be your best friend and you just have to get it right and really work on it.

SPEAKER_00 38:30

Yeah, 100%. And I think you're so right, soil is so important because if the soil's not right, if the pH isn't right, we're not getting flowers, we're not getting vegetables, and it's something that you actually have to keep on top of every season. It's not like, oh, I popped compost in two years ago. It's you have to keep on top of it. And so I guess is there anything in particular that you find that you want to grow that you haven't grown yet? Or are you planning any new garden beds like in your space that you've got? Like, what's what's the future of your garden looking like?

SPEAKER_01 39:09

So I'm trying to get my partner Sam out there at the moment, and we want to create a new big garden bed at the front. So if you can imagine our front garden has a lot of lawn, and Sam is really proud of the lawn, but I'm like, it's useless. We need to dig it up and put more flowers in. So anyway, he has agreed. He's great. And we're going to dig out a big new garden bed and we're gonna put a tree in. Um, I'm trying to put as many trees in as possible without it looking too cramped or anything, because I just think a block with no trees is the saddest thing in the world. You have to have trees, and in that, I think the first season, I'm just going to do a bit of experimenting and trialling of seeds and what I can grow because it's more space for me to have fun. So this year I really want to focus on poppies. So last year was my first successful year growing them. I grew just the standard Iceland poppies, and I didn't think, I don't know why I thought this, I didn't think I would be able to grow them where I am, because I think I had heard even my mum saying that, like, oh, I can't grow poppies. But I had an abundance and I was so shocked of how many that I had. So this year I'm just going to try so many different varieties, and I've bought so many seeds of the peony poppies, I think it is, and the deep they're kind of like a big deep purple one, they're really beautiful. Um, I'm gonna just chuck them all in and see what grows. So I really hope that I get some poppies, but another thing that I really want to focus on is growing more delphiniums because I feel like I haven't really grown many, and they're such a beautiful flower, and you can get them in so many different colours, and yeah, I just want to put them in the garden and have lots of them as well.

SPEAKER_00 41:08

So, um, it's been so great hearing about your journey with gardening, and it's great to see the rise in younger people getting into gardening as well. I think, you know, it's really, really great for our mental health and just all around physical health as well, and getting out in the sun and getting vitamin D, which a lot of people lack these days, especially people like us who um have more office type jobs. I guess for you, like, how do you see gardening?

SPEAKER_01 41:36

I always say this to people, it completely changed my life. Like, without it, I actually don't know what I would do. It is the free therapy that I get to have, and it's the best type of medicine, and it just calms my soul. I can just go out there, switch off, and just work on the garden, and it gives you so much purpose when you grow things, when you see things you've grown from a tiny little seed turn into this amazing flower, like the feeling that you get, it's it's just the best, and it's such a good hobby to have, and I think it's something that teaches you a lot of patience as well, because gardening a lot of people just think it happens overnight. Like, how do I get this in like a week? Or you know what I mean? Like it's just it teaches you to slow down and really focus on the little things and the little changes you might see in a little flower or something terminating from the ground. And that's what I love about it. And I've been really, really trying so hard to enjoy the process of growing things from ground up and not rushing things and not planting things close together because they look pretty at the time and then they grow terribly. You know, just slow down, have patience, and just enjoy the whole process of gardening. Even pulling out the weeds and pruning your roses, like everything. It just it's just been a really great type of therapy for me. Um, and whenever I feel anxious or overwhelmed, I I love to go out in the garden and just work on it.

SPEAKER_00 43:23

That's honestly you're so inspiring to listen to, um, and I know what your garden looks like, so I I can understand and I'm really excited for everybody who's listened to the podcast today to actually witness your amazing space and yeah, your dedication and love for gardening. And it's just been an absolute pleasure to speak to you and thank you so much for joining us. And I'm so excited to see what's in store for you in the future. Thanks for having me, Nat. It's been a really nice chat. It has been. It's been really good. Now, for anybody that wants to follow Em on social media or have a look at this beautiful garden that we've been talking about. I will pop all of Em's links in the podcast description and in the article on our website and up on our social media. But yeah once again Em, thank you so much for being here and I'm really excited for everybody to hear your story and to see your beautiful garden. Take start see you guys. You've been listening to How I Grow, a podcast produced by the Seed Collection in Melbourne, Australia. It's our aim to make gardening more accessible to more people and this podcast is one of the many ways we're doing that. If you don't already know who we are, jump online and visit www.theseedcollection.com.au and you'll find a treasure trove of gardening information as well as a huge range of seeds, garden supplies and accessories. Thanks for listening and happy gardening