Gardens of WA: The thriving veggie garden created during COVID lockdowns

We all remember the run on toilet paper that characterised the start of COVID lockdowns. Aisle after aisle of empty shelves filled the news. But most news reports neglected to mention that countless other strange things were selling out too. At the height of 2020, you couldn’t buy a jigsaw puzzle for love nor money. Bizarrely, at one point you also couldn’t buy actual live chickens. I heard from one chicken breeder that he had refused sale to someone who lived in a top-floor city apartment and wanted a chicken so he’d never run out of eggs. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, vegetable seedlings were also bought out of every garden nursery. Staring at the empty shelves, I remember wondering how much of this would stick. Would the first-time gardeners, leaving with armfuls of tomato, lettuce, and zucchini seedlings, still be gardening when lockdowns ended? This week’s garden gives me my answer. “We’d moved in just before COVID and bonded when we were home a lot,” explains Mandy Sherring, standing in the quiet, sun-drenched street of her Beaconsfield home. “We came up with this idea to put garden beds out the front. It was more of a social thing. It’s morphed as times gone on into a shared set up and we’ve put more herbs in that everyone can use”. Beside Mandy, Sadie Holmes and Fiona Wheeler are nodding, surveying the raised beds filled with tomatoes, chillies, lettuces and herbs that make up their shared neighbourhood garden. Another neighbour, Nina, was the garden’s originator. “Nina bought all the beds and the soil, Mandy says. “She used to be in the army — she was our troop leader, she pulled us all into line.” Nina has since moved house, but for Mandy, Sadie, Fiona and a few other neighbours, the love of the garden has remained. In fact, it’s grown. “Other people walk past because they’re curious and we’ll chat about it,” Mandy says. “And we have a once-a-year harvest dinner — that’s spread as well — we invite the other neighbours too.” Sadie says: “We all try to make something with the produce that we’ve grown.” Fiona adds: “And we have sundowners — we bring out nibbles and have a drink.” Behind the raised beds is a long bench for morning cups of tea, beside which a painted sign christens this garden ‘The Plot’. The Plot sits on a corner block, on what would otherwise be lawn. “We’re so grateful to our neighbour who lives here — he lets us have his verge and shares his water over summer,” Mandy says. This garden, like so many, is evidence of the ripples that spread outwards from a single good idea. It leaves me wondering just how many friendships could be fostered, how many dinners could be cooked, how many quiet moments in the sun could be enjoyed, if every street corner had just a few raised beds filled with worms, veggies and flowers, and a group of neighbours who loved it.