About

The Patch Gippsland is a small-scale regenerative market garden where we grow fresh organic produce and flowers on Bunurong country, South-Eastern Kulin Nation. We acknowledge and pay respect to the Bunurong people, as well as their traditional lands and waters.

We are a husband and wife duo who met at a horticulture college more than two decades ago. We have both worked in the environment field for our entire working lives, with a combined academic and professional background in horticulture, environmental science, and environmental social science, with a focus on climate, sustainability, natural resource management, and intersectionality.

We use growing methods that protect the land we tend to, the water we use, and the residents who call it home. Organic growing reduces pollution, improves and protects water quality, maintains soil health, and promotes ecological diversity. Growing (and eating) organically also reduces our exposure to harmful synthetic pesticides and chemicals. Organic crops often contain higher levels of antioxidants, enzymes, vitamins, minerals, and micronutrients.

Growing flowers alongside edible plants offers numerous benefits, including enhanced pollination and harvest, pest control, increased biodiversity and ecosystem health, culinary diversity, and better therapeutic health outcomes. We believe growing flowers organically is equally important as growing fresh produce organically to ensure both a healthy ecosystem and healthy organisms, which in turn helps to ensure healthy pollinators and the safety of humans and beneficial insects. The use of toxic chemicals in flower production has caused environmental contamination (particularly to soil and water) and human health risks to not just flower growers and residents in flower-growing areas but also to consumers.

Regenerative market gardening, particularly the "no-dig" approach, is important because it promotes soil health and enhances biodiversity, leading to more sustainable food systems. Healthy soil also sequesters carbon from the atmosphere, helping to mitigate the effects of climate change. As a bonus, soil that is rich in carbon can also help to hold more moisture and nutrients in the ground.

Our online journal and shop are centred around all things gardening. Our shop contains products we know, love and use ourselves, helping support both the wonderful makers, several of whom are our friends, as well as our patch. We hope to contribute to the sense of community of fellow gardeners and garden lovers who appreciate a greener, gentler, healthier, and more sustainable way of living.