Meet the Gardeners: Plot 3

Interview with Micky and David Ashton, Plot number 3   

Please introduce yourselves.

Micky is a retired corporate librarian. She plays tennis twice a week, is a volunteer at her old school, Ruyton, and at her club, the Lyceum, and she does Pilates once a week. David works part-time at Scotch College as a writer and editor for the school’s publications. He sings in two choirs and is a Melbourne Cricket Ground tour guide. We are both diehard Melbourne Football Club supporters, and we belong to a bushwalking club. We love travelling overseas and at home.

  What inspired you to join the community garden and how long have you been a member?

We have been garden members for more than 12 years. We wanted to join the garden because we had limited space to grow vegetables at home, and a big plane tree in our street tends to suck moisture and goodness out of our home garden.

What do you like to grow? 

We enjoy growing tomatoes and corn in the summer and brassicas or broad beans over the winter. These crops grow much better in the community garden than in our shady home garden.

What has been a challenge in your plot?

Rats have been a major challenge, especially the year when they ‘harvested’ about 40 per cent of our corn crop. We’re grateful to the garden committee for the way they have tackled the rat problem.

Why do you enjoy gardening?

It’s great exercise, good for the soul, nice to meet and chat with/learn from our fellow gardeners, and rewarding when a big crop of corn or tomatoes is achieved. It can be frustrating when plants sometimes fail, but we can learn from our mistakes.

What are you excited to grow next?

We’re looking forward to planting our corn and tomatoes, perhaps interspersing them with pumpkins. Last year I grew some ridiculously large pumpkins at the garden (and wrote about them for our website), but as I said in that website article, size was everything with those pumpkins and taste was nothing!