Canberra musicians have the X factor when it comes to garden biodiversity

When Megan Taylor and her family moved from Downer to Narrabundah, they brought a huge compost and mulch pile with them, dumped it out the back of the house and lived off the vegies from it for two years. The property was an old garden of the non-productive kind which they have gradually planted. Megan says the explosion in bio-diversity has been just like in the books only this time it was in front of their eyes.

Megan and her husband, Richard McIntyre, are both musicians who worked at the Canberra School of Music for many years. Her first place away from her Sydney home was in Norway in 1977 and she was amazed how much and how easily the people lived off the land, in an intergenerational connection, foraging and hunting as well as growing marvellous berries and vegetables.

Her two big gardening influences in Canberra are: Jan Jennings, who set up her productive garden in Macgregor that she and her husband built from scratch (there was no soil), and Anne Dawn of Curtin. Both used to arrive at the Taylor-McIntyre house with armfuls of produce while her south-east Asian friends in Canberra all grow masses of green leafy vegetables.

Jan Jennings invited Megan to several Australia's Open Gardens in Canberra. In 2007, at one of them in Higgins, a scientist-gardener had cut his water use by 80 per cent using swales. These ditches dug on the contour have been incorporated into the Narrabundah garden and they allow water to spread evenly across the slope and sink into the earth. The dug earth is placed on the downhill side and the flat area is called a berm. Harry McIntyre, 16, has dug a new bed which has been planted with cornflowers, poppies, blueberry bush and herbs including sage, tarragon, lemon verbena, lemon balm, wormwood, chives, dill, thyme, parsley, saffron, oregano and comfrey.

In 1994, when Megan was playing the cello at a concert at the Finnish embassy, little tartlets were served with alpine strawberries and she rushed into the garden to find the patch. She was given a clump of strawberries, which has now spread as a productive ground cover in the front garden where native warrigal greens are almost smothering the first spears of spring asparagus.

The family composts everything including the manure from a little flock of six chooks, two Buff Orpington, two Isa brown and two black. Megan uses a little mulcher to chip up anything going in the neighbourhood as well as trees under their powerline in the back garden which are pollarded​ and chipped instead of being removed.

There is a small young orchard of plum, nectarine, peach and miniature peach, apricot, almond, pomegranate, quince, mulberry, cherry, thornless blackberries and youngberries​, passionfruit and grapes. Megan has attended grafting workshops in Pialligo to learn how to graft apples and feijoas.

On a holiday job in Sweden she was responsible for the vegie garden and preserving countless bottles of berries, cherries and other fruits. In England, the joy of summer cucumbers and cordial from elderflowers inspired her to plant both.

In a pair of large raised beds, covered with netting to protect the crops from possums, there is rainbow chard, snow peas, artichokes and onions. The books of Peter Andrews have changed Megan's thinking about the Australian landscape and created a determination to grow and eat native foods.

She has planted two edible wattles from native plant sales in Canberra and indigenous murnong or yam daisies, saltbush, chocolate lilies, mint bush and Bulbine glauca​ plants with yellow flowers which will be followed by edible seeds.

McIntyre is helpful in the garden, loves his strip of grass on which a new table and chairs have been placed for summer relaxing, and enjoys vegetables.

The family was amazed by the taste of the first dried beans from the garden, green beans which were allowed to mature then used in delicious soup.

Scandinavian dishes form the basis of Megan's cooking but anything fresh from the garden takes its place on the table and the wild nature of the water-wise garden means there is always something ready for a green dish.

Susan Parsons is a Canberra writer.