Christine Fernon's decade of care bears fruit in Ainslie garden

Christine Fernon is a plantswoman with a wonderful eye for colour combinations in her cottage garden in Ainslie, to which she will welcome visitors on the weekend of February 21 and 22.

The nature strip has been planted with native plants, and a bird bath, one of six, attracts kangaroos as well as birds. The front garden is filled with a rich palette of flowering perennials including valerians and salvias used for their long-flowering and water-wise habits and bees love them.

Fernon grew up in Glen Waverley, at that time on the outskirts of Melbourne, surrounded by market gardens that sold directly to the public. She has five siblings who had hungry mouths looking for food so they were encouraged to eat fruit from market gardeners' crates that were left in the family's laundry.

She came to Canberra to study at the ANU and returned there in 1999 to work at the Australian Dictionary of Biography where she is online manager. Ten years ago she moved to a 1940s house in Ainslie in what was known as the "working men's area" of Canberra. It had been a rental property and the garden was a mess, an ideal situation for a keen, but then novice, gardener.

Fruit trees are espaliered along the driveway, underplanted with nasturtiums as a living mulch and they self-seed every year. Two raised vegie garden patches are to the side and back of the block. Growing vegetables in an area separate from the main garden makes them easier to maintain and the kitchen gardens also have cheerful colour plantings to attract bees for pollination.

Everything abounds with health as 80 bags of cow manure, mushroom compost and blood and bone are added to the whole garden each spring.

The vegetables are mulched with sugar cane, lucerne or pea straw. In autumn a green manure crop is grown in at least one of the four vegetable beds. A seaweed solution is used as a regular foliar spray and the vegies are watered from three slimline water tanks.

As a keen reader of gardening books and magazines, particularly The English Garden, Fernon discovered that nitrogen in comfrey is good for fruit trees and roses so when she harvests the leaves, some are thrown at the base of those plants. The remainder is added to two compost bins.

As she does not like the taste of spicy or bitter foods like coffee, olives, ginger or rocket, Fernon grows edibles like sweet corn raised from seed, small varieties of watermelon. Thriving too are bell-shaped green peppers and Lebanese eggplants and beans which are climbing up the former wood shed.

Five years ago, Christine's creative older sister, Catherine, who lives in Tasmania, taught her how to mosaic. She gets crockery from second-hand shops and tiles from remainder warehouses. As there is not enough space for her to keep free range chooks, Fernon has placed a dozen of their mosaiced cousins under the clothes line and she has been mosaicing bits of the house and lots of her garden pots. They bring a whimsical note and sense of play to the landscape.

Catherine Fernon has made three ceramic signs for the vegie garden including "Give Peas a Chance" and she will join her sister at the open weekend where new mosaiced garden pots will be auctioned with proceeds going to Care for Africa.

Through her research work, Fernon has come across the great seedsman Arthur Yates, and orchardist Nicholas Jasprizza who could do better out of the gold rush growing fruit and vegetables than could a digger.

Through the Obituaries Australia website, two of her favourites are outback Western Australian pioneers 'Old Chris' Coppin who had 10 children and died aged 76 and archaeologist and gentleman farmer James Stewart who was buried in the family vegetable garden. Reading about the hardships they experienced and their vegetable gardens gives you an appreciation of their vital importance.

Open garden

Christine Fernon's Cottage Garden, 18 Ebden Street, Ainslie will be open for Open Gardens Australia on February 21 and 22, from 10am-4.30pm, entry $8.

Part of the proceeds will go to the Australian charity Care for Africa Foundation. The garden is suitable for prams and strollers, wheelchairs and dogs on leads too.

Susan Parsons is a Canberra writer.