Donna Ellis - Sustainable Gardening for Dummies

Sustainable Gardening For Dummies

by Donna Ellis

Wiley Publishing Australia Pty Ltd

Sustainable Gardening For Dummies

Australian & New Zealand edition published by Wiley Publishing Australia Pty Ltd 42 McDougall Street Milton, Qld 4064 www.dummies.com

Copyright 2010 Wiley Publishing Australia Pty Ltd

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data

Author:Ellis, Donna.

Title:Sustainable Gardening For Dummies/Donna Ellis.

Edition:Australian & New Zealand ed.

ISBN:978 1 74216 945 3 (pbk.)

Series:For Dummies.

Notes:Includes index.

Subjects:Sustainable horticulture.

Sustainable agriculture.

Organic gardening.

Gardening.

Dewey Number:333.7616

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Cover image: iStock.com/Tyler Stalman

Cartography by MAPgraphics Pty Ltd, Brisbane

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Printed in China by Printplus Limited

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About the Author

Donna Ellis lives and breathes anything horticultural! Her passion is obvious as she willingly shares her knowledge and experience with whoever will listen and this group grows larger as more people have the opportunity to hear her words of wisdom. She challenges, provokes and empowers her listeners to make changes in their gardening practices so those changes will eventually become the ordinary, everyday procedures everyone employs. The stories she inevitably tells make people connect to the subject, whether it is about botanical gardens or backyard vegetable patches. You name it, she has a story about it, and these stories keep her audiences enthralled to the very end. Ask any of her students, community members or colleagues and theyll vouch for this.

Donnas work experiences at the start of her horticulture career, when chemicals and disregard for the natural environment prevailed, led her to believe there had to be more-sustainable alternatives. A firm believer in common sense and practical solutions to everyday garden problems, Donna has been a leading light of the sustainability movement since the early 1980s.

She is a horticulture teacher at South West Institute of TAFE in Warrnambool, Victoria, a sustainable garden consultant, a garden designer, a writer for newspapers and a speaker to community and professional groups. She works with Sustainable Gardening Australia, delivering seminars on sustainable management of parks and gardens in metropolitan Melbourne, and with Greening Australia, developing and delivering community workshops on backyard biodiversity throughout western Victoria. In addition to her usual teaching, Donna also develops and delivers sustainable horticulture training programs at TAFE to Special Developmental Schools, a labour of love.

She is a member of a number of organisations and networks, including Sustainable Gardening Australia, the Australian Garden History Society and the Friends of Warrnambool Botanic Gardens. She is a past president of the Friends of Hamilton Botanic Gardens and was a founding committee member of Encouraging Women in Horticulture Australia.

Donna owns and has owned a large variety of pets goats, chooks, pigs, a horse and many dogs, including a Saint Bernard called Bernadette!

She lives with her partner by the sea. Since her recent research trip to New Zealand, she is now planning a Kiwi-inspired garden for their new property. She kayaks, rides a bike, and grows her own vegetables and herbs, sustainably of course! She is also a great cook, using produce from her garden. Donna is a woman to be reckoned with, and now you can share in this huge part of her life sustainable gardening.

Dedication

Thanks Jude, you said I could do this... as always, you were right.

Authors Acknowledgements

Writing a book like this is definitely not a solo exercise. There is way too much information and expertise here for me to have in my head. This book could not have been written without those curious and committed professionals who research, promote and publish the principles and practices of sustainability those who go about the business of promoting sustainable gardening through their research, publications and workshops. Thanks to them, I have been able to carry out the necessary research for this book.

Thanks to my best friend Judith Boyle for everything, from proofreading, typing and researching to shoulder rubs and endless cups of strong coffee, and everything in between; and to my son, William Ellis, without whose diligent research skills this book would have taken so much longer! Thanks also to Mary Blake-John, my dear friend, who taught me to teach and gave me confidence all those years ago, and still does; and to my friend and colleague Elaine Shallue from Sustainable Gardening Australia for her constant support and encouragement, and for giving me the opportunity to spread the sustainable gardening message.

I would like to thank my students, both past and present, for their unwavering support and (mostly) helpful advice. I think I learn more from them than they do from me. Their thirst for knowledge and their commitment to making the world a better place through sustainable horticulture is truly inspiring.

Baskets of sustainably grown, non-weedy indigenous flowers must go to Charlotte Duff and Bronwyn Duhigg at Wiley. To Charlotte for giving me the chance to have a go in the first place; and Bronwyn for guiding me, for always being on the other end of the phone and for the coffee. Big baskets to Kerry Davies, an inspirational, intelligent and humorous editor and mentor... I hope I have served my apprenticeship well.