I AM ORGANIC KITCHEN GARDENS
Its a passion for Design, Cuisine and Sustainable Food Production.
MY STORY
Management Consultant turned Garden Designer
Once upon a time in a land far, far away lived a lady of... Alright, I know what you’re thinking, and yes I’m pulling your leg. But on a serious note, six years ago I had a young management-consulting career focusing on business process re-engineering and change-management.
I thoroughly enjoyed the hustle and bustle of consulting, working on different projects with different clients and organisations nearly every three months, the constantly steep learning curve, the rush. It was fantastic.
However, when the time to build a family knocked on the door, I left that career and became a stay-at-home Mom.
Being a Mom is hard work all day, every day. Its amazing how something so little can be so much work. Coping with the demands of a new-born, I spent time cooing over interior design books, magazines, decorating tips and techniques. Mention it and I was on it like butter on freshly-baked bread.
That year, I made 3 metre drop winter drapes for my little boy’s room, interlined and block-out lined with a classic French triple pinch-pleat header, hand-sewn from start to finish. It was magnificent, still is. There’s is therapy in fabric, needle and a thread.
A MOM, A COOK
My second and biggest escape was my cooking. I was a serial Masterchef\Top Chef groupie. Still am. The franchises provided me with some great tools and techniques to elevate my cooking. There was just one problem.
Some of the gourmet ingredients we see on TV are not readily available at our local super- or farmer’s market. And when you do get them, some tend to be on the higher end of the pricing band.
So, I thought I would grow my own. I grew up helping my mom, grans and aunties in the garden, both at home and in the fields. In my village, people didn’t grow lawns. Both the back and front yard were used to grow food. We also grew everything organically. Of course we didn’t call it organic. For us it’s just good old farming.
Armed with some packets of seeds and potted herbs, I thought, well how bad can it be?
A GARDEN ENTHUSIAST
It was bad, and then it got worse.
Now before your judge me, bear in mind that at this point, I hadn’t done any real gardening in over 15yrs. The lessons I had learnt growing up were somewhere in there waiting to be discovered.
Luckily, I’m a bit of a nerd. So, my curiosity coupled with desperation and a knack for research hard-wired in me from my consulting days led me on a journey of rediscovering the art and science of working with the soil.
A DESIGN ENTHUSIAST
As I was learning about organic gardening, the gardens I saw were not inspiring.
My recently discovered designer persona kept coming back to this question, why can’t they be both edible and beautiful? Why is the veggie patch relegated to the back of the house where no one dares to go if they wanted to live?
Then I discovered, plants do not discriminate themselves according to how they look. Side note, we could learn a lot from them. In fact, they are happy to live together with their different colours, shapes, sizes and forms as a community of edible and non-edibles working together for the health, beauty and utility of the landscape.
So today I design, build and maintain stylised kitchen gardens for:
The culinary artists – because I love to cook and I know you are going to love working with these freshly-harvested ingredients;
The Home Cook – Because I know that like me, you want to feed your family only the best; and
Urban Foodie – Because I know you don’t have time and you need an instant garden that will provide you with fresh ingredients and practically take care of itself, while you are busy doing life.
So don't be a stranger.