“You know exactly where to find each vegetable. It’s like going to a shopping centre and you know exactly which aisle to go down. I’ve worked hard and planned it exactly how it should be …”

Many of the best gardeners start early. Mark Hoffmann was three years old when he sowed his first pea in his father’s big vegetable garden in the historic Geelong suburb of Belmont.

Originally from Silesia — then in German Prussia, now part of Poland — the Hoffmann family has grown deep roots in Australia over the past one-and-a-half centuries. They came to Victoria via South Australia where the family once owned a winery.

Mark is Geelong born and bred. He grew up on his father Martin’s 760m² block in Belmont, three doors away from Mark’s grandfather Heinrich, a Lutheran minister. Martin grew flowers for three churches and vegetables for the congregations. He also raised fattened animals, especially lambs and breeding ducks, and Mark remembers dashing around with Indian Runners that were as tall as he was.

“Dad knew how to butcher and hang birds,” Mark recalls. “My grandfather didn’t earn steady wages as a minister but he received church offerings, so we were dependent on our livestock reproducing and living off the land. The church would purchase our chickens and we’d have plenty of church cook-ups. “I let our chooks go one day and most of them disappeared!”

As a teenager, Mark pruned trees and picked fruit for Italian farmers in Silvan in the Dandenongs and also in Seymour. He went on to work at Geelong Hospital as an orderly, then as a paramedic, and has lived on his quarter-acre block in Belmont Heights for 23 years.

A small orchard

Mark and wife Sheena are organic gardeners more by accident than design, he reckons. “We always had a vegetable garden and we were never really aware of organic growing — we lived it without realising it, I guess.

“When I started in the ambulance service I earned $25K per annum and $7k went on expenses. We learned quickly how to live off the land and save money.”

Accidental or not, something sure seems to be working. In a combination of pots and raised beds, the Hoffmanns grow herbs, garlic, shallots and an exotic salad of fruits: lemons, apples, pears, plums, bananas, fig, tamarillos, papino, babaco, white sapote, passionfruit and three kinds of guava. They also grow hazelnut, monstera deliciosa, yacón tubers and azolla, an aquatic fern sometimes called duckweed.

Mark is particularly proud of his prolific garlic. He attributes his success to a talk he attended by garlic grower John Olliff at Geelong Organic Gardeners, of which Mark is a member. “I purchased a number of garlic bulbs from John,” he says.

Another big inspiration was the late botanist and horticulturalist George Jones of Geelong Botanic Gardens — a “garden brain”, according to Mark.

He adds, “I use my hands a lot and I grow seasonally and from seed.” His seeds are sourced locally from Ben Keon-Cohen of Birdland Seeds (featured in Good Organic Gardening #8.2 last year). “I can grow a whole lot of vegetables from a $15 packet of Ben’s seeds.”

Establishing the garden wasn’t all plain sailing, however. “We had a weed problem at the start,” says Mark, “and flooding was an issue. We had four floods in 20 years; water levels came higher than our property. It took three days to pump the water out. Now I don’t have any water issues.”

They also had to contend with asbestos, snails and a Heritage Overlay, which under Victoria planning regulations can be applied to any site that “may be significant for scientific, aesthetic, architectural or historical reasons or for any other special cultural value”. The whole of Belmont Heights Estate is subject to a heritage order.

Man with a plan

When a future Geelong Historical Society digs up Mark’s yard, it will discover the outline of a tidy, well-planned garden.

Having grown up among the chaos caused by 30 ducks, he says, “I’ve built an orderly garden for my family to enjoy. Everyone can enjoy their space in the garden. I spent 17 years making it what it is today.

“You know exactly where to find each vegetable. It’s like going to a shopping centre and you know exactly which aisle to go down. I’ve worked hard and planned it exactly how it should be, with many water-saving ideas.”

Among the latter are 16,000L tanks to harvest water, a solar hot-water system and a greywater recycling device, a Gator Probe (designed by Australian Bruce Sheriff of Just Water Solutions), which distributes waste kitchen and laundry water to Mark’s fruit trees.

Other measures towards sustainability, he says, are to “reclaim timber from your fences and prune your trees”. He collects sticks and bark from nearby trees, mulches it and uses it as ground cover.

For fertiliser, Mark uses iron powder as well as hot compost, a concept he learned from US soil microbiologist, Dr Elaine Ingham. With a couple of others he came up with a backyard composter, a cubic-metre container with “30 layers of a mixture of straw, leaves, sawdust and household waste”.

The heat inside gets as high as 66°C: “I disposed of a dead bird in there. It was completely dissolved within three weeks; all that was left was hollow bones.”

As far as pest control goes, Mark stomps on snails, uses beer traps and occasionally deploys snail and slug pellets that are safe for pets and the planet.

“My cats Millie and Belle are white cabbage moth catchers,” he says. “They’re so good at it and they eat them straightaway. I guess they like the crunchy taste.”

Mark doesn’t bother with a worm farm, however: “There are plenty of worms in our compost bin [but] you can’t let it go rank or fungal. You have to do it properly, otherwise it’s dangerous. Worm farms are out for me; worms eat pure humus and they’re everywhere in my garden.”

Other visiting wildlife includes a welcome family of geckoes that eat snails and slugs. Mark places rocks to house them. There are also plenty of beetles in the trees that attract tiny spotted pardalotes. He adds, “Then there’s the brown goshawk that sits on a tree limb happily eating a pigeon.”

But it’s not all about “nature, red in tooth and claw”, as Tennyson put it. Mark Hoffmann’s achievement here, on an average-sized suburban block, is to “marry Australian bushland and vegetables”. In an orderly fashion, of course.

Mark’s top tips

• Monitor your mulch — don’t let it go rank.
• Cut trees back; they require a healthy trim.
• Allow wildlife to live freely in your garden.
• Store water; it costs you nothing.
• Grow from seed for stronger stock.

For more information and tips on gardening, visit  https://www.completehome.com.au/outdoors-gardening

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An outdoor kitchen complete with sink, storage, and ample bench space. Photo courtesy of Alfresco Living.

Considering how much Australians love the outdoors — and barbecuing — it won’t come as a great surprise that the outdoor kitchen is one of the fastest growing lifestyle trends. The beauty of having one is that it centralises every aspect of entertaining: the cooking, eating, and fun is all had in the one space outside.

Gone are the days of hosts having to traipse in and out of the house carrying food, plates, cutlery and so on. With an outdoor kitchen, everything is in the one space. And best of all, cooking smells stay outside!

1. Planning and design

To get started, the budget is your most important tool. Determine exactly how much you have to spend and don’t forget to allow for labour costs if you get a professional company to install it, as well as the cost of all the appliances (dishwasher etc) and hardware (such as wood, plumbing supplies, sink, lighting, and draw handles). It’s always worthwhile leaving a little extra as a buffer as there are bound to be a few hidden costs here and there or things you’ll need that you weren’t aware of.

Once you’ve determined your budget, stick to it — it’s easy to get carried away. To avoid having a half-fabulous, half-finished kitchen, stick to your plan.

2. Do your research

Make a wish list of everything you’d ideally like, then work out what you can afford and what can fit in the allocated space. Think about how you entertain and the type of food you like to eat. Would you get use out of a rotisserie, a pizza oven, a wok burner, or a teppanyaki plate? Do you like to cook seafood on a barbecue plate or is grilling steaks on a flame more your thing? Would you like to be able to roast meats as well?

Also think about whether you’d like gas burners so you can cook side dishes such as vegetables. If you want it to be a truly comprehensive space, you may also want to consider having an oven and a microwave in the area.

Your options

• Barbecue
• Microwave
• Extractor fan
• Oven
• Rotisserie
• Pizza oven
• Wok burner
• Teppanyaki plate
• Sink
• Freezer
• Ice maker
• Beer trough
• Wine fridge
• Dishwasher

A wood-fired oven is a key element of this outdoor kitchen. Photo courtesy of Justine Carlile Landscape Design.

3. Room to move

Once you know what you’ve got to work with in terms of finances, measure the available space in your backyard. If space is minimal, you won’t be able to have the whole kit and caboodle, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a fabulous outdoor kitchen. Essentially, the more space you have, the fancier it can get, but you don’t need a lot of room to do it well.

It’s important to think very carefully about how much room you want the outdoor kitchen to take up; if space is limited in your yard you’ll need to exercise restraint or there’ll be no room to sit and relax or do anything else. You’ll need to find the right balance between a kitchen that will meet your needs and retaining enough space for entertaining. When you’re doing your measurements and planning, don’t forget to allow enough room for outdoor furniture such as lounges and a dining table so you have somewhere to sit and eat.

4. Head for cover

Remember that your outdoor kitchen needs to be completely covered and weatherproof. This can mean positioning it under an existing permanent roof (such as a verandah), having a roofing extension built, or even erecting a pergola-type structure. If building a pergola, it will need a solid roof. Another option is a retractable sail or awning that can be pulled back during fine weather and extended when it’s rainy or when the outdoor kitchen isn’t being used.

Side protection is also important, so if your outdoor room doesn’t have solid walls to protect the kitchen, you can always plants a dense hedge or erect a screen to keep wind and rain from entering at the sides.

With a few simple additions such as heating (think strip heaters in the ceiling, a built-in fireplace, or just a patio heater) and fans (ceiling fans or free-standing), the area can truly be used throughout the year, regardless of the weather.

This Justine Carlile-designed kitchen and dining area is perfectly placed for an easy indoor-outdoor flow.

5. Space out

Where will your guests be seated and where will they eat? Bench space is an important design consideration, particularly if you plan for your guests to sit around the bench to eat.

The layout of your outdoor kitchen should provide for room to eat, whether it’s a space for a dining table or simply bar stools set around the outside of the benches.

If space is limited, a galley-style kitchen is ideal or an L-shaped bench design. Larger areas are great for U-shaped layouts and can incorporate an island bench with cupboard space underneath.

When choosing the site for your outdoor kitchen, the distance from the inside kitchen is something that needs to be considered and will determine whether you need to incorporate extra storage, refrigeration, or washing-up facilities.

6. Power up

You will need a qualified plumber and electrician for all connections to your outdoor kitchen. When it comes to gas you’ll also need to identify which gas supply you will be using so that you can purchase appliances accordingly.

By Sunny de Bruyn
Originally from Outdoor Design & Living magazine Volume 26

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