When I was a kid, houses sat on an average quarter-acre block. My computer informs that a quarter acre is 1011.714 square metres.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
A quarter acre is big enough for a three-bedroom house, a dunny covered in passionfruit vine, four swings, a tricycle race track, chooks, a cubby house under the willow tree, half a dozen fruit trees, 24 rose bushes, a vegie patch and enough room for a politically incorrect game of Cowboys and Indians that involved every kid in the street.
Years passed. House lots became 32 'perches'. A perch is enough space for someone to perch on, like a 'foot' was roughly the size of a man's foot, or my foot in gumboots that are a size too big, and an inch is the lower length of my thumb. Curse decimalisation!
Sorry, I got distracted there.
My computer says that 32 perches is 809.37 square metres. Houses have become larger, too. The garden of my childhood now contains two houses with five bedrooms, studies and ensuites, and two gardens, each about two metres square.
What can you do with two metres of garden?
Lots.
1. Grow vegies: plant two square metres of English spinach, silverbeet, carrots, and red curly-leafed lettuce that you can pick NOW. According to my computer, this will save you at least $300 by November, or just over $1000 if you love spinach triangles, vegetable fritters, and green-coloured curry.
2. Plant a crabapple or purple-leafed plum tree and fragrant rambling rose to climb up it. Arrange a wooden seat around it's trunk so you have fruit, perfume, shade and winter sunlight, and room for eight people if everyone bunches up.
3. Install a sandpit for the kids, with a cover so it doesn't become a cat, bat, possum or bird lavatory.
4. Install a sandpit for grown-ups, with coloured sands in various shades of ochre from golden to dark brown. Make a new sand sculpture every few days then watch as the wind reshapes it.
5. Create or buy a frog pond, which may turn into a dog pond when your resident woofer needs to cool down in the heat, and then a bird bath with the dog inside at dusk.
6. Purchase pear trees, one early bearing and one winter bearing. Plant them in the same hole so they 'self graft' and become one pear tree. Prune the lower limbs to have pears from February until mid winter, shared with birds, fat possums and possibly fruit bats.
7. Create 'patchwork' paving: remove every second paver and plant the space with thyme, mint, white alyssum, winter savoury, bluebells, freesias or even lettuces or tomatoes: any small beloved plant that will feed you or delight you and need minimal care, as there will be no room for weeds to get a toehold.
8. Impress your guests with a beautiful and original sculpture, thus supporting our artistic community. Or place an even bigger sculpture made by your kid at woodwork where every one can see it.
9. Be gloriously indulgent with thyme lawn, a pergola covered with grapevines, and a big waterproof cushion or a hammock to lie on, and watch the sky or the stars under a lattice of leaves.
10. Grow one single, magnificent standard rambling rose, well staked, underplanted with varied bulbs to flower in every season, plus alyssum so there is never any bare ground.
11. Invest in two square metres of saffron crocus bulbs, about 40-150. My computer says this can give you 926 saffron threads, which will earn you between $200 for poor quality saffron to $800 for good quality saffron. One bulb will also give you 2-4 bulbs as they increase the next season. You will now have between 40 to 600 saffron bulbs to sell at between $2.90 to $10 each, or somewhere between $80 and $6000, less expenses, but remember that neither I nor my computer are reliable guides to finance.
12. Two square metres is enough for a burial ground for five pet rabbits, six pet rats and innumerable goldfish. Add a bush of 'rosemary for remembrance'.
READ MORE JACKIE FRENCH:
13. Two square metres is also enough space for a convenient lavatory for your dog, if it's a small dog. If you have a large dog they will gaze at you reproachfully each time they have to use only two square metres. Canine lavatory spaces are best planted with thornless ground cover roses, which thrive with the amount of dog offerings that will kill grass.
14. Create a patchwork of tiny succulents that won't die in a drought, nor burn in a bushfire.
15. Add a pergola, a barbeque, table, chairs and a rosemary bush to flavour the meat;
16. A wall painted with a trompe-l'il scene will seem like you have the whole gardens of Versailles every time you or your guests look outside your window.
17. Cool down and 'scent up' with a solar-powered fountain which recycles its water, perfumed with just a little rose oil.
Or do whatever your imagination and lifestyle requires. But humans need more than two square metres of greenery. Take the kids, the dog or just yourself to the park or the hills, where you will find a whole landscape of trees and golden grass, so you can hear the wind and smell the soil and watch a wide sky across Canberra. And you don't have to mow, fertilise or weed any of it.
This week I am:
- Picking very few zucchini, because it has been either too hot or too wet for bees to pollinate the flowers. This year is possibly a once in a lifetime "we have exactly the number of zucchini we need" occasion.
- Suddenly noticing that the crepe myrtle has bloomed in not quite pink and not quite purple, and is glorious.
- Trying to give away finger limes. Try adding the little globules to your favourite cheesecake and lemon slice recipes. They are magic, in taste and texture.
- Weeding. Sigh. I had almost eradicated weeds from my garden when the bushfire winds blew in endless varieties.
- Explaining to the kikuya grass runners that they don't belong in the vegetable garden, and that other well behaved grasses don't penetrate beyond a barrier of thickly planted garlic chives.
- Guiltily getting rid of a three-metre paper wasp nest that was taking up most of the upstairs veranda right above our front door, and terrifying guests even though paper wasps aren't aggressive unless you sit on one.
