Our Story

Last year (2008) my wife, Ellen and our four children and I travelled Australia living and working in small communities around the country picking fruit, gardening and learning about our culture and our heritage. 

When we returned to the largely suburban Central Coast, I saw a stark contrast and realised our society’s predicament. Many Australians have forgotten their past and grown away from nature. Many people don’t even know where their food comes from. …and this is such a big part of who we are.

The old saying about how you are what you eat kept repeating itself to me. It’s so true. Many people today are over processed, artificially preserved and flavoured. They waste energy and are focussed on appearance not substance, our young forced to maturity too early… The more I thought about it the longer list of metaphors  just grew and grew.

For me gardening has always been a passion. I love to get my hands into the dirt and observe how things grow and thrive. The reward is seeing my place in the larger ecosystem and feeling the simple pleasure of connection to the earth. I realised I didn’t need to go anywhere to feel this connection, for me a garden is a place where you can commune with nature in your own backyard.

I have over 20 years experince in the garden from lawn mowing and maintenance as a teenager to running an extensive landscaping construction business on both east and west coast of Australia. I have created landscaped native gardens with beautiful waterfalls and lakes full of fish and yabbies to 1m² kitchen gardens on balconies for pensioners on a budget.

I’ve always taken a sustainable organic approach. Over ten years ago I studied with David Holmgren co-originator of the Permaculture Concept. Permaculture is the conscious appraoch in designing landscapes to be productive and energy efficent while seeking to mimic patterns and relationships in nature.

Mainstream society is now starting to understand the impact we have on our planet; climate change is leading us to make a conscious choice about how we live and interact with the workld around us, to conserve energy, to conserve water and to think more the food we feed our families. Permaculture techniques can be used to create integrated garden systems that provide food, shelter and beauty for people to live in more sustainable ways.

Lifestyle magazines are now full of recycling tips, rainwater tanks, home insulation rebates. Growers markets, ‘locavore’ gourmet groups, slow food restaurants are springing up everywhere. 

This greening of our lifestyle is an opportunity to reconnect with who we really are.

I would like to help individuals and communities to make that connection with the earth and help them to bring about a positive, rewarding and healthly future.  

Growing our own food makes a huge difference in our lives and is particularly important for our children. There are now some great initatives to get this sort of information into schools. One particularly worthy scheme was launched by reknown Australian chef Stephanie Alexander, for more information visit

Once you’ve established your own kitchen garden you will cut your food bills, you’ll have guaranteed quality, freshness and nutrition. You’ll be placing less of a strain on the planet and you’ll waste less food.

If you'd like more information on how Adam's Garden can help you in your edible garden please contact us.