Moving From Singapore to Australia Re-Ignited My Passion for Gardening

In Singapore, everyone lives in high-rises and apartments. Greenery is everywhere you look across the city, but none of it was mine to touch because the city looks after all the green surfaces. It was a total contrast to my childhood in the Philippines, where I grew up surrounded by animals, crops, and working on my rice farm.

Laying the Lawn

When we moved to Australia, the very first thing I did to get back into gardening was helping my husband re-turf our entire streetside front yard. We hired a guy with a mini dingo to come over, strip the ground, and load up the old turf.

We picked out Zoysia Matrella grass from a local grass farm near Beaudesert, prepped the soil, leveled everything out, spread chicken poo, and finally got the slabs delivered.

We laid those slabs down like Tetris, watered them, and waited for them to fuse together.

I was too in the zone to think about much else while doing the work—just hard yakka, sweat, a cold glass of water, a good lunch, and spending time with my husband. It felt deeply purposeful and satisfying.

The transformation creeped up on me, like a clock where you don't see the hand moving, but when you look again, it's a completely different time. Once it all joined together, it was pure pride and joy, and an incredible achievement at a large scale for my first real stab at getting back into it.

Building Our Garden

In our backyard, we started small with sedum and planted a young Japanese maple tree brought down from Mt Tamborine.

Later, when we moved to a new place, we built a Japanese-style Zen garden with Zoysia tenuifolia. It was a site to behold.

From there, my garden really took off. I ended up planting saba banana, black and white mulberries, papaya, blueberries, pineapple, kalamansi, cumquat, passionfruit, grapes, a curry tree, an olive tree, and lemongrass.

From Yard to Kitchen

Harvesting what we grew brought everything back to the kitchen. I charcoal-grilled the saba bananas—they are starchy and perfect for cooking. Later on, I used our fresh moringa tree leaves, water spinach, and okra to make warm soups. Getting my hands back into the dirt after years of apartment living made all the difference.