Finding wonder in nature

Otago Daily Times

4 days ago

With the increasing prices in the supermarket, many home gardeners are choosing to live more sustainably and grow their own fruit and vegetables. Louise Frampton talks to a Wingatui woman whose food forest is thriving.
Sara Pepers-Hiltrop is an advocate for living sustainably and has set up her own edible paradise.
Five years ago, she and her husband, with their two young children, bought a property in Mosgiel and moved in just as the Covid-19 lockdown started.
She says it began with a dream to recreate an idyllic childhood, a place where children can climb trees, find birds' eggs, scavenge for berries and where they can marvel at "the wonders and abundance of the natural world" and so Wingatui Homestead was born.
"I grew up on an organic orchard in South Canterbury and I wanted to recreate this lifestyle, especially for my children and generations to come," Mrs Pepers-Hiltrop says.
Initially there were just a few big trees on the property, but slowly she is transforming 0.4ha of the property into an edible food forest, based on permaculture principles.
The lawn and pasture that used to surround the house has been replaced with layers of a "forest", mimicking a natural ecosystem, from the tallest of shelter trees down to the smallest of root crops underground.
With a predominantly clay-based soil, she uses a no-dig method of building up layers of organic matter with grass clippings and plenty of leaves that people drop off to her.
"It's all about not disturbing the soil microbes too much," she says.
As we meander around the garden, it is clear Mrs Pepers-Hiltrop's dream is coming to fruition. Most plants are still dormant, but the buds are swelling, a branch of one pear tree is already in blossom, a monarch butterfly is gracefully fluttering past and the birds are happily chattering, alerting us the garden is starting to awaken.
In a few months' time, the garden will be in full production supplying the family with cornucopia of veges, fruit, berries and nuts to eat, give away or preserve.
The selection of fruit and nut trees on the property includes many heritage apples, pears, nashi, quince, apricots, peaches, plums, almonds and hazelnuts, all of which Mrs Pepers-Hiltrop has grown herself from grafting scion wood on to rootstocks.
She clearly has natural green fingers and enjoys propagating many plants, which is evident from the collection in her nursery area. Grafting is a skill she is especially relishing.
She has even cut back an old cherry plum tree and re-grafted it with plums and apricots.
"It's a bit of an experiment, but I like doing experiments."
Nestled among the fruit trees is an under-storey of perennials and flowers to attract pollinators, block out weeds, repel pests and add year-round interest.
And growing beneath the trees are potatoes, yams and mashua — a white type of yam which grows as a vine similar to nasturtium — which are ready to emerge once the frosts have subsided.
There is plenty of variety around the garden, such as tree lucerne for the birds, buddleia for the butterflies, olives in the dry areas and water cress in the damp areas.
"I try to keep it diverse," Mrs Pepers-Hiltrop says.
Which is also why she does not get a lot of pests.
"I think a lot is down to the biodiversity. I've also got frogs, skinks, earwigs, millipedes and predator wasps."
She also has six Cayuga ducks, which are being encouraged to wander around the garden and gobble up any slugs. But the chickens are wisely fenced off from the food forest, as their natural scratching behaviour can cause havoc in the garden.
At this time of year, Mrs Pepers-Hiltrop is finishing off pruning.
She says stonefruit such as apricots, peaches, cherries and nectarines should ideally have been pruned in summer after they finished fruiting. Stonefruit is more susceptible to fungal diseases, such as silver leaf, if pruned in winter.
But it is not too late to prune pipfruit such as apples, pears and quince.
She says the main problem people have with pruning is they do not realise a fruit tree can't be pruned like a shrub.
"You just can't get the hedge clippers out."
"You have to structurally go through the whole tree and have a look at it and decide what to take out."
"You want all your fruit on the top and outside of the tree so it can get sun on it and ripen."
She says overcrowded branches inside the tree limit the airflow which can lead to powdery mildew and woolly aphids and diseases.
But it is not just the pruning that is important. Thinning out the fruit in summer is essential too to ensure the fruit has adequate room to grow to a decent size.
"You don't want 20kg of marbles. You want 10kg of good-sized apples."
She encourages people to build their own food forest by starting with just one tree, and then building the layers around it.
"There's so much craziness, pain and suffering in the world that can sometimes leave one feeling quite powerless. This is something I am within my power to do, to try to change things for the better.
"I hope it inspires people to try to grow their own food and try to live a bit more symbiotically with nature."
She says it is not as hard as people think.
"You don't actually need a lot of space for a few fruit trees or berries."
To help other people get started she has set up a small business where she offers pruning services and has a private backyard nursery offering a click and collect service from her Wingatui Homestead website for fruit trees, shrubs, berries, herbs and perennials.
"I've worked in the corporate world and it just wasn't for me," she says.
"I want to do something that's fulfilling and that I am passionate about. It is small at the moment, but I hope it will grow."