Gardens of WA: Nurturing a garden for a lifetime can lead to positive change, inspiring generations to come

About half the people who buy a property will sell it and move on within 10 years. Granted, 10 years is long enough to make a lot of positive changes to a place. It’s long enough to watch small saplings turn into medium-sized trees, to grow plants that boost insect diversity and begin to bring birds back to your suburb. But what if you stick around longer than that? What if the garden you build isn’t grown over a decade, but a lifetime? “It’s strange to see a significant part of your life dedicated to replanting a tiny bit of a degraded piece of land,” muses Frank Lister as we walk across the Balingup property that he and his wife Marg have been working on for the past 48 years. Have you noticed the surprising similarity of our surnames? I’ve finally badgered my parents into letting me tell their story. They are squarely to blame for my love of gardening, and I suspect my father (who does most of his farm work in a pair of old slippers) is to blame for my tendency to garden barefoot. I figured it was time they posed for a few photos in front of their life’s work. “We found the block in 1975, from an ad in the newspaper,” Marg tells me. “The land had been cleared and overgrazed with cattle. We planted and reticulated hundreds of small deciduous trees, looking forward to a forest in the future.” At the time of planting, these ‘small trees’ were essentially sticks 50cm tall. But 40-plus years of growth has changed that. The forest Marg and Frank dreamed of came, slowly, to fruition. While the trees were growing, my parents kept busy. They built a stone house, which is now surrounded by fruit and nut trees — citrus, cherries, peaches, plums, apples, avocadoes, pistachios, macadamias, chestnuts, walnuts — and a sprawling veggie patch and rose garden. There is also an ancient orchard of pears, the only edible trees that were here when Marg and Frank arrived. “We were inspired by the notion of permaculture,” Frank explains, “but we discovered that the job of having a variety of fruits, nuts and vegetables was much harder than they made out in the books. The soil at Balingup was perfect for growing everything, but we hadn’t counted on the parrots, rabbits, kangaroos and emus, eating everything that we grew!” Fortunately, despite the challenges, there were successes. “Every year now is different but productive in some way,” Marg says. “We grow lots of tomatoes, basil, garlic, leeks, pumpkins, potatoes and other seasonal vegetables. You name it and we have tried to grow it.” What does a lifetime of defending pistachios from hungry parrots give you? “I think there are things that you learn from working in the garden that just sink in,” Frank says. “By watching the rhythms in the patterns and the trials and tribulations — it’s like the dirt gets under your skin.”