A vibrant pink house is perched atop a steep hill. Goats munch in the upper corner of the property, on a homemade deck. Plants burgeon down the incline in masses of green, housed in garden beds. There is an edible forest garden, honeybees busily pollinating, chooks rummaging, ducks waddling, a puppy’s tail is merrily wagging, a fruit orchard ripens- and a wonderland of play possibilities await children.
This is in the upper echelons of Hobart, Tasmania. You can look out over the city to the sea, gathering perspectives. People are often welcomed to this home as part of Gardening Australia, and most recently, Gardening Australia Junior.
Avid great outdoors enthusiast and green thumb Hannah Moloney has cultivated the land here with her husband as they raise their daughter. Where once people saw difficulty on a vertical piece of land, they saw opportunity. Together they have imagined and created. They are here to inspire others to do the same and embrace the beauty of life connected to the earth.
The garden is a creative outlet for Hannah and her family. It brings in people and life. It is both practical and fun. They share the load and share the seasons. The garden isn’t perfect, but it is productive and abundant.
“To us, it feels like there is love oozing out of all the places,” said Hannah.
Like something out of a storybook, Hannah said that children thrive playing here.
“They love it. We accidentally built, I think, a kids dreamland because our house is hot pink. They say, ‘Oh my gosh’. They love it because often that’s not the case.”
“They are very drawn to this place: ‘I want to be here’.”
Hannah said she is always re-learning to be present, the children leading the way.
Sometimes, in busy times, she rushes through her chores in the garden. She is hurrying to get things done. When it gets busy, she can become depleted, losing the pleasure in the present- yet, taking the time to wander, to take a cup of tea into her patch and observe the change and growth calms and steadies. Chatting with someone else and enjoying a gardening activity or project together also proves restorative.
Hannah observes how much the kids love the animals. They want to pat the goats, feed the chickens, find the bugs, chase the butterflies.
“It is incredibly interactive and as long as there’s not torrential rain, when kids come to our place they are usually outside in the treehouse or the garden, eating all the things, playing or patting the animals.”
There is biophilia alive and well at Hannah’s home. Our innate connection to the outside world and our innate need to connect with nature comes to life in these kinds of spaces.
For playgroup aged children, there is a degree of osmosis at work, as they absorb the goings on of the outside world. They innately desire to get up close- to inspect the contours of a leaf, the path of a snail, the coat of a dog, water glistening in a puddle.
The children who form part of Gardening Australia Junior have amazed Hannah with their breadth of knowledge. Despite the plethora of technology and streaming services, the show has proved compelling to young audiences. The outside world will always call.
Shooting the show in her own garden was a dream come true.
“It was like something you would see on Play School or something,” said Hannah. “It was gorgeous.”
Little ones rush up to Hannah in the street, sharing their stories, or often stopping once there and not saying anything. They can’t believe Hannah is real, away from the screen.
Hannah has loved to receive so many emails from children, with the help of their parents, sending in photos and stories of their garden triumphs: ‘Here is a photo of my butterfly garden that I made because I saw Frida and you do it on the telly’.
“That is the best golden feedback you can ever hope for,” said Hannah.
In one of the latest episodes of Gardening Australia Junior, one of the young hosts, when planting compostable pots said: “Patience is key”. Part of gardening is patience and making mistakes and trial and error. For kids, it’s about seeing the change, having a hand in creating it and caring for it.
Early experiences and memories forged in the garden can be carried for life and often, it is children who lead adults back to the garden, reawakening the spirit- and yet, for children, it is the adults who nurture this connection with the outside world to begin. Connections, passed down and passed on.
Hannah has been immersed her whole life. Her Dad began a herb nursery in their back garden. Her parents then bought the house next door and merged into that garden and once her Grandmother moved across the road, they merged into her garden, too. This was in Brisbane.
“We ended up with maybe around half an acre of herb nursery in the middle of a big city so it was quite unique and at the time it was very normal- ‘Oh yeah that’s what we do’- but looking back it absolutely laid the foundations for A: Urban agriculture, you can see what’s possible in small spaces and B: Just a love of plants.”
“It is quite a magical thing- to be able to cultivate, germinate plants and create more life- that’s cool.”
Once Hannah turned 18, she left the herb nursery behind, travelling around Australia- but her deep connection to the land stuck and within six months she was again working in a nursery.
“Once I found my own community I was off and I haven’t done anything else my whole life basically. It’s been different versions of what I do but all under the banner of organic gardening, permaculture and climate activism. It all fits under that big banner.”
Her work in the garden is an extension of who she is, where she derives meaning and this is represented in her latest book, Good Life Growing.
The book is about how to grow fruit and vegetables in any Australian climate. Hannah wanted the book to be for everyone, no matter your postcode or bank balance. She hopes it supports people to grow food on balconies, in back gardens- wherever there is space.
“I hope people A: Get growing and B. Remember that we are all the garden, we are not just here to extract things from the earth, we are part of the earth,” said Hannah.
“There is nothing like growing something- no matter how small, when the light bulbs go off left, right and centre and all of a sudden you are making really different life choices based on your deeper understanding of what a food culture can look like.”
Hannah believes that it is good to constantly stretch ourselves and see how much good we can do in the world. She knows that this requires being outside your comfort zone. Within reason, you have to rest and look after yourself, but Hannah is often uncomfortable, trying the next thing out.
“I am definitely having a crack. What more can we ask for, for ourselves, than to do our best and turn up enough for ourselves.”
One of the biggest sources of meaning Hannah draws from the garden is the community it creates.
One thing Hannah enthuses about is the co-ownership of her goats. She shares the load with neighbours. Some days she milks them, on other days her friends do. It creates interaction. It creates activity and companionship. To work on something together. To create positive outcomes. It lifts and carries each other on. One is reminded of the saying, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
For families and playgroups wanting to begin a garden of their own, Hannah says do just that, begin. Gather together, have a barbeque, go on a picnic, talk about your dream, your vision, create a loose plan. Seek out a space where a garden can grow.
“Where to start is- basically get the community because you are growing food, you’re growing plants, you’re really growing communities, an equally strong thing. Make sure you have a strong team together so it’s not just one or two people, it’s a group.”
“It’s a really inclusive way of gathering new people, not just you and your friends but going, ‘Hey, anyone can come’. If that’s the vision, you can build the community in that geographic area, not just who you know personally. I think that’s a really clever thing to do.”
If it is council land or private property, Hannah encourages communities to think about the benefits of cultivating the space and share your findings.
Hannah often reads over strategic directions and finds that there is opportunity to make something from nothing. There is opportunity for growth, both in the garden, and for its residents.
“Starting small can be a really clever, beautiful thing.”
“Take the time to lay those strong foundations and don’t be disheartened by starting small because sometimes that is the best way to long-term success- but also, have a crack. Don’t get analysis paralysis which is the thing where I’ve got to think about this and plan it for the next ten years, I won’t do anything yet- no no. The other side is just go for it. Be safe and sensible and responsible with things and talk to the immediate neighbours around you, but I think there is a big thing in our brains where we go we’re not allowed to do anything unless we own that land- we are all citizens of the earth, we belong to the earth.”
Like tending to a garden, children and carers need the support of many, to have a sense of belonging.
Hannah believes the nuclear family model doesn’t really work. It is too much pressure. On each other. On finances. She and her partner love each other so much, “which is rad”, they are a great team, united in parenthood- but the early years took a toll on Hannah’s body and how she felt.
Hannah can’t help but smile thinking about how funny her daughter is. How much deep joy she brings- but she doesn’t want to be untrue about how challenging it was in the early days. Motherhood for Hannah has been beautiful and hard.
“I think it’s been really hard and I love her dearly- both those two things, both those tensions can hold each other.”
Hannah said she was conscious to not thrust gardening work on her daughter, to make it a chore- it has been a natural nearness and exploration that leads her.
“Even without us not directly teaching her things, she’s got a strange and weird amount of information about the garden,” said Hannah.
“It just sinks in and I think that is wonderful for her confidence, you can see she is very proud to be able to show her friends, ‘This is how you grow a carrot’, ‘This is how you milk a goat’ and all those different things- but also, she has a connection to place and a connection to land I think is really important.”
“Frida our daughter is very comfortable in her skin, very comfortable climbing the trees, or digging in the dirt, playing with the ducks and that is really I think physically healthy but I think spiritually and emotionally healthy as well. I think it is a good grounding- regardless of whether she is a gardener when she grows up. I think she will be, it would be weird if she’s wasn’t,” laughs Hannah.
“I think she’s got this really good foundation of what landscapes are. They’re not just a place to park a car and go inside a house, a landscape is to be lived in and that is a beautiful thing.”
It is an interesting time in history we are all living in, watching younger generations emerge into this world where technology is speeding everything up, yet in the garden, we are encouraged to slow down.
Children are born into a fast-moving technological landscape.
Hannah thinks about this a lot, the proliferation of the online world and how it feeds back to our wider habits. Things such as how we shop, how we consume, how we spend our time. Yet, it can help to create a wider platform to share information and build understanding. It can be a link to new opportunities to connect with the outside world.
“My dear friend Costa Georgiadis does lots of work with kids across Australia through Landcare or Bushcare, all these different school initiatives,” said Hannah. “They use technology but it’s all about finding the birds, finding the frogs, collecting data on soil health and all those things. I think that has been a really good thing for me to think about. Technology is here to stay and it’s so fantastic when used well.”
“I think, ‘How can it help connect or draw the line back to things that really matter?’- and that is feeling connected, love, relationships, people, the planet, all of those things.”
“I think we need to really encourage kids to not rely on screens maybe so much and just go do the thing, have their hands in the earth and not have to always connect that back. That can be quite challenging and complex sometimes but it is definitely something to hold up and work towards or integrate when you have that control over certain situations.”
In the way that life often leads you where you need to go, Hannah found herself filling in on a few episodes of Gardening Australia some years ago. Soon enough, she became a permanent fixture of the program and is grateful for it everyday.
“It is a beautiful thing to be part of the Gardening Australia community. Wherever I go in Australia, people welcome me: ‘G’day!’ We are in the garden or talking about the garden within 30 seconds,” laughs Hannah, “and that is a really generous, heart-warming community to be part of.”
So often on Gardening Australia, the fragrance of a plant leads to a story, a recollection. So often a plant transports us back somewhere: Nan’s house, the garden near the shed in summer, a freshly picked piece of fruit, a family holiday. Early contact with the outside world resides in parts of us.
As life hurries along, Hannah believes that we have to return to those moments of immersion, of who we were when it all began.
“I think something I have had to re-learn is that things only feel really good in my life, or only flow well, when you are in touch with what really matters and I think that is deeply connected to your inner child and what was true to you when you were younger. That thread carries through to being an adult. I think it has been critical, for me, becoming an adult is an ongoing journey, discovering how you see the world.”
“I think honestly, we are meant to be our full selves, uncensored, that is the best, most beautiful thing. I really think that’s our little kid version inside us just saying, ‘This is who we are and this is what we look like’ and that is beautiful and we can just let that roll as much as possible.”
The outside world will always call, it is up to us to listen. Like Hannah, to seek out the good life. To get together and get growing. To Begin.
Alongside children, we are encouraged to walk with them and see the wonder of the world for what it is.
The outside world will always call.
Explore More: Good Life Permaculture
Article by Sinead Halliday