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Fact Sheet: Getting a Head Start

Jerry meets an enthusiastic young gardener in Brisbane's south who caught the gardening bug at an early age, and is working towards a life in the garden

Presenter: Jerry Coleby-Williams, 30/03/2013

SERIES 24 Episode 03

Jerry introduces us to an inspiring young gardener

Sometimes, the inspiration to be a gardener strikes early and that's just what happened with Brandon O'Neill. He was only 10 years old when he first discovered the joys of gardening.

"I got really into it, passionate about it, about three years ago when I saw the Gardening Australia program and I saw them growing vegies in containers," Brandon explained. "I asked mum to go out and get some seeds which I put into an old storage box - planted them in there - and it started growing and they were cucumbers. So the cucumbers started producing and since then I've been hooked."

Now he's 16, Brandon loves gardening more than ever - especially when it comes to growing food. He's taken charge of the garden on his family's two-hectare sloping block located south of Brisbane on the Logan River. I caught up with him to ask how his garden started.

"Well, after we cleared out all the lantana, I had to build above-ground beds, so I put three main beds in. I transplanted a lot of plants from my old garden and since then I've just been adding different beds along the way."

Brandon's garden has amazing diversity for one that's only six months old. In one bed alone, he's growing about a dozen types of lettuce, mountain spinach, different types of basil, celery - how did he manage it?

"Well a lot of plants are from my friends, so as soon as a space pops up, I'll pop in another plant," Brandon said.

He told me he doesn't clear the bed every season, but experiments with his plants.

"Yes, a lot of them are experimental, like the red spinach (Red Mountain Spinach, Atriplex hortensis var. rubra) - I've never grown that before, so I'm just seeing how that grows in this sort of climate. Stuff like the celery - I was told it couldn't grow properly up here, but here it is."

He's also got around needing much money to spend on garden hardscaping:
"I use a lot of recycled material such as sleepers and reo-mesh and an old bed my uncle was just going to throw away so I saved it to make a 'garden bed, bed.'

His herb spiral was built from material salvaged from their property - a massive piece of cement slab that was broken up with a sledgehammer.

The back corner of the garden has a different microclimate that Brandon's using to his advantage.

"This area gets a lot of sun and extremely hot, dry winds, so I've got stuff that can cope with that, like corn and snake beans," Brandon said. He's also got watermelon and chillies doing well, but the bad news is he's got to hand water the area - which takes him an hour a day! He's also trying to get his friends involved in discovering exactly where food comes from.

"Yeah, I'm trying to get some friends of mine into gardening. I get neighbours' children to come over, pick some fruit, vegies, that sort of stuff and take it home with them. I think we need to get more kids interested. I've had friends that have come here and didn't even realise pumpkins grew on a vine and yeah - I think we need to get more people knowing where your food actually comes from and knowing how to grow it."

It's great to see someone as young as Brandon taking to gardening so enthusiastically and making it such a big part of his and other peoples' lives.
