Earlier this year, Megan and I worked with some other local families to start a gardening club called the Jamberoo Family Growers. Unlike traditional garden clubs, this group will have a focus on helping people to grow fruit and vegetables at home, using healthy natural methods and tapping into local knowledge and experience. It will [...]

We’ll be putting our house here in Kiama on the market very soon Our house is now on the market! If you know someone looking for a house in Kiama, please let them know!

We’ll be listing with Dougmal Kiama.

Our house has 5 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, 2 living areas, double garage, rear entertaining area and a [...]

A while ago I noticed some fruit trees growing on the side of various roads around Jamberoo. They looked like peach or nectarine trees, but I couldn’t be sure without seeing the fruit. I kept checking on them every month or so, and early this year saw young fruit that showed they were peach trees.

Once [...]

If you live in Australia, did you know that you can now access green retrofits for your house for free?

Check out all the sustainable retrofit rebates available here in Australia. Make sure you scroll to the bottom and find your state ones, too.

You could get a rainwater tank, a solar hot water system, solar electricity, [...]

Sometimes, it’s interesting to do a bit of background research on some of the plants and trees you grow. When choosing our mandarin variety, I did exactly that and found something with a little bit of Australian history to it.

The mandarin I planted a couple of days ago is an Ellendale mandarin. It is named [...]

On Sunday I drove up to the Wollongong Wholesale Nursery at Albion Park Rail to buy some fruit trees with my Sustainable Illawarra Super Challenge vouchers. The staff there were really helpful, and gave me some good ideas for the types of trees that would suit our needs for the front yard.

I pretty much already [...]

When we did our house extensions about 5 years ago, we didn’t really do much with the front yard. We always meant to come back to it someday, but never quite got around to it. We never bothered to plant much in the way of trees and shrubs either, since we didn’t want them to [...]

Sometimes it takes me a while to get around to writing up these entries – last weekend I attended my first Illawarra Seedsavers meeting, and it was great.

There were about 10 people at the meeting. Being my first, I didn’t know what to expect, but the other people were all very friendly and welcoming. They’d [...]

Yesterday we had our Sydney Water “Love Your Garden” session. For $33, a qualified horticulturalist comes and inspects your garden and gives you advice on its watering needs.

Our horticulturalist (let’s call her Linda) arrived bang on time. She was very friendly and knowledgeable, and understood right away where we were coming from. I explained about [...]