Avant Gardeners – Details, episodes & analysis

Oh hey there! We've missed you.

We're back for Season 3 with one of our faves, Erin Lovell Verinder.

Erin Lovell Verinder’s entire career is about reconnecting the people with the plants.

She is a woman on a mission to bring people along on her journey to become in tune with the natural world and inspire others to heal through the beauty of plant medicine. 

Erin is a nutritionist, a herbalist, a teacher, and a writer, having published Plants for the People in 2020, followed by The Plant Clinic the following year. Her popular TED Talk on Herbalism, the quiet rebellion, is a must watch. 

Erin and her husband Noah currently live, work and garden on the land of the Bundjalung people, in the Byron Hinterland in NSW. They recently relocated there from their stunning and lovingly restored home in a church in the aptly named hamlet of Blessington, in Northern Tasmania. Their Tassie property, The Cedar Church, is available for your own divine getaway.

In the episode Emily and Maddie are catching up on 2 months of no-gardening-chat and there's been a lot going on. 

We're drinking bootleg gin from Maddie's neighbour Bill with Friendship Syrup from our amazing friend Rachel Valentine. We're talking about Paulette Whitney's Broccoli & Other Love Stories, we're making chilli oil, we're growing and cooking Brussel Sprouts. And we're drooling over the perennials, and the colour collections, at Veggie & Flower Garden Seeds. We're going to need a big heap of Milkwood's Perfect Seed Raising Mix to grow everything this spring. Watch out when you mix lavenders :-)

Buckle up ya'll, it's the final episode for Season 2 and we're welcoming one of the nicest blokes in gardening to the microphone, Mr Phil Dudman. With a diverse and colourful career that extends from touring with an 80’s rock band, to hosting garden tours in Italy, an epiphany when Phil was 27 sent him down the literal and metaphorical garden path and he hasn't looked back since.

Phil is a trained horticulturalist, gardening talkback host on ABC Local Radio, the horticultural editor at Organic Gardener Magazine, has written books and is a familiar face on TV, Youtube and social media.

Phil runs workshops and courses both online and from his own backyard, and you can explore what's on offer at www.growyourfood.com.au.

Phil lives and gardens on the land of the Widjabul-Wai-bal people of the Bundjalung Nation in the Northern Rivers region of NSW.

We chat to Phil about pests, garden design, attracting birdlife to your backyard and weeding with wine at 10am. 

Before we get into it though, Emily and Maddie are drinking a Jauma grenache. We're talking about online marketplace purchases and tip shop wins. We're using Google Images to sort out our plant ID issues. We're sluggish with the garlic, and Maddie is barely keeping the lights on with her garden. Emily's finally sorted the pesky carport out, and her 7 year old daughter is winning at gardening this month. 

Follow Phil on Instagram here, check out his YouTube here and his website here

Ashley James is a garden designer and horticulturist based in the Yarra Valley, Victoria, on the lands of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people.

He started working in the industry when he was  just 14 years old, alongside his dad. He started his own business aged 23 and went against the grain, focusing on soft-landscaping and design, when all the cool kids were doing landscape construction. He went on to study horticulture, and now works on everything from vineyards, to large wedding and function venues, urban spaces, country estates and cottage gardens. Ashley’s known for his beautiful, romantic gardens that weave traditional design principles with naturalistic plantings. 

Ashley’s aim is to create a dream garden for each client. He is an absolute plant and flower die hard, and is a self-professed Plants Man. He and his work has been featured on The Block, Better Homes and Gardens and Country House Facelift, while a stunning Eltham garden project was written up on the Design Files. If he isn’t busy enough, Ashley continues to create his dream garden at his own home that he shares with his wife Bianca and three children, and he’s the newest columnist for Home Beautiful, providing amazing gardening advice and inspo.

We're drinking
Latta Rattlesnake

We're talking about

Winespeake in Daylesford on Instagram here.

Dimity's amazing stall at Cygnet Garden Market - Check her out on @TinyFarmTas

Edna Walling

We're also talking lemons, seaweed and how hard gardening is.

We're reading
The Age of Seeds - How Plants Hacked Time and Why our Future Depends On It by Fiona McMillan-Webster

Visit us at @avantgardeners.podcast and www.avant-gardeners.com

This week we're chatting to the super lovely Brenton Roberts whose garden we've coveted for a long time now. 

Brenton lives in the Adelaide Hills with his wife Libby and young family, breathing new life into the garden and home, built in the 1860s. They moved to the property about 10 years ago, and commenced the thoughtful process of transforming it to a magical, whimsical and productive space.

Brenton was a finalist in 2018's Gardener of the Year Awards, and has been featured on Gardening Australia - a show he grew up with and was inspired by. He had his first Paul Bangay book by the time he was a teenager, and an amazing farewell gift by a former boss looped him back in with Paul later on. 

Notes for this episode:

We're drinking a Vini Fusilli Pinot Nero Romolo 2022 from our delightful friends Lucinda and Piero who live down the road (and we have to ask ourselves whether we only make friends with people who have either great gardens or access to great drinks. Maybe we do?). 

We're reading The Milkwood Permaculture Living Handbook by Kirsten Bradley 

And we're also reading The Smart Veggie Patch by Terry Memory

We're shopping for hydrangea and funeral tips thanks to the Gardening Australia Magazine

Sadie Chrestman didn't get into gardening until she was 40, but she's quickly made up for lost time. Sadie moved from inner-city Sydney to the Huon Valley in Tasmania, settling on a property called Puggle Farm, where she got stuck into everything from animal husbandry, admiring wood piles, and deep soil knowledge.

Stepping it up a notch, Sadie, and her partner Matthew Evans, purchased a 70 acre property they named Fat Pig Farm, opening a market garden and setting up a restaurant. When one of their much loved Market Gardener moved on, Sadie put her hand up for the role, taking on 1km of garden beds for a weekly restaurant sitting - sometimes feeding up to 200 people per week, with produce almost entirely coming from the farm.

Fat Pig Farm have created a bush foods garden with Aunty Kris Schaffer, are doing gin collabs with Nat Fryar from Abel Gin,  and are spreading the good word about the importance of soil. 

Notes for this episode:

We're drinking a Rhubarb + Ginger Margarita inspired by Fermented Chilli and Yuzu Salt from Rough Rice

We're reading The Compost Coach by Kate Flood, aka Compostable Kate

We're watching Live to 100 - Secrets of the Blue Zone on Netflix

We mention:
Gardeners Bay Farm

Are we missing anything? Just drop us a line on Instagram @avantgardeners.podcast

Thank you!

In this Episode we interview your friend and mine, Dimity May. Dimity's gateway drug to gardening was through market gardening, but she turned her attention to seedling growing just as the pandemic (remember that guy?) was just taking off, setting up Reid Tiny Farm in Canberra as a CSA model, for seedlings.

In 2023, Dimity, her husband and two kids, made the move to Tasmania's Huon Valley, and since chatting with Dimity (she was our very first interviewee!), she's changed her business name to Tiny Farm Tas, and has been incredibly busy setting up her operations in a new state, a new climate, and with a new model.

It's no mean feat, and we are in awe.

Notes for this Episode.

We're drinking Ravensworth vino

Guest:  Dimity May, Tiny Farm Tas (previously Reid Tiny Farm)

Some of the things we chat about:

Milkwood Permaculture: Organic Vegetable Gardening (Next course begins 20 November, 2023)

The Food Savers A-Z, The Essential Cornersmith Kitchen Companion by Alex Elliott-Howery & Jamie Edwards

Tiny Farm Canberra 

ActiveVista 

Buena Vista Farm 

All Sun Farm 

JM Fortier  The Market Gardener’s Masterclass 

Keeley, Fat Pig Produce - local veggie boxes in Southern Tasmania

BioDynamics Tasmania 

Joyce Wilkie, All Sun Farm 

The Sustainable Food Trust, Patrick Holden 

The Regenerative Journey, Charlie Arnott 

Ep 03 - Welcome back Avant Gardeners! 

We bring you Part 2 of our chat with friend and rose-die-hard, Pip Steele-Wareham from @The_Garden_At_Moorfield.

In this chat we explore her 150m (no, that is not a typo) naturalistic garden, and then go deep on roses - why she loves them, how to tend to them, selecting the right rose for you and beneficial plants to keep them healthy.  

If you didn't catch Part 1 of this chat, jump in now. 

This week ....

We're drinking a most delish Sailor Seeks Horse Pinot.

We're reading The Gardeners Bed-Book by Richardson Wright as well as My Father and Other Animals by Sam Vincent

Find us on Instagram at @avantgardeners.podcast

Ep 02 - Avant Gardeners

In this episode we give you Part 1 of our chat with our friend, and inspirational gardener, Pip Steele-Wareham who is doing magical things at her property Moorfield @The_Garden_At_Moorfield in Victoria. 

A lot of this week's chat is about her and her husbands Hugo's previous property Little Oak and the challenges and successes they had there. We speak about Pip's approach to gardening (find what you love, and grow that), her obsessions with soil, and if -nay, when - rhododendrons will come back into fashion. 

It's a juicy little Episode, and we'll be back in a fortnight with Part 2. 

What we're drinking

• Chatto Pinot Noir, 2021. Bloody delish

References worth looking up

• Milkwood Permaculture
• The Garden at Moorfield

As always, find us on Instagram @avantgardeners.podcast, and please rate, review and subscribe wherever you're listening to this podcast.

Hi, and welcome to Avant Gardeners. 

In this episode we give you an intro into the lives of Emily and Maddie, two friends who live, play and garden on Melukerdee country in Tasmania's Huon Valley, with varying success.

Both have unexpectedly landed on properties, with vast gardens, and very little know how.

In future episodes we'll be inteviewing others, but in this episode it's all about us. 

What we're drinking

• Merry Spiced Cherry Amaretto Sour (based on  this, recipe but with home made cherry sugar syrup inspired by Verona Stands, and aquafaba)

References worth looking up

• Serious Backyard Vegetables, a past course by Milkwood Permaculture
• Matthew Evan's carrot top pesto recipe, available in The Commons
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

Rodney Dunn's excitement when talking about gardening is like a kid in a candy store. Fuelled by a 'quest for flavour' and inspired by The River Cottage UK, Rodney and his wife Severine moved to Tasmania in 2007, opening The Agrarian Kitchen, a cooking school and garden that has grown to become an institution itself. In 2017 they added a restaurant to their offering and have recently opened up their phenomenal one-acre walled garden adjacent to the Restaurant and brand-new cooking school, making it the trifecta of all things agrarian dreams.

We chat to Rodney about what he learned from the 'old garden', the new no-dig method they've used, we go deep into mycorrhizal fungi, tips to take on-board when starting a new garden, and what his last meal would be.

Before we get into that, we're drinking a Negroni (equal parts gin, campari and vermouth, shaken and served over a big fat icecube with an orange garnish) and it's delicious.

We're chatting dibblers, garlic, golden beetroot, Lactic Acid Bacteria and so much more.

Emily's recommendation is The Practical Australian Gardener by Peter Cundall, Maddie's recommendation is this salad dressing - honey, grated garlic, salt, sherry or white wine vinegar, oil. Put it on everything. 

Explore classes and garden tours or book a lunch at The Agrarian Kitchen here, and follow them on Instagram here. Find Rodney on Instagram here.