Gardening Australia’s Hannah Moloney on how gardening helps with her ‘dark hole’ of self-doubt

Hannah Molonley, effervescent Horticulture Australia The presenter always had his hands dirty: he grew up in inner-city Brisbane, helping out at his father’s urban plant nursery. Her mother, meanwhile, worked as a research librarian for the Native Title Court, and Moloney says she had a strong sense of social and environmental justice by default.

In addition to his TV work on the long-running ABC series, Moloney works as a permaculture designer, educator and climate activist. But it is never didactic; You can’t imagine him lecturing anyone on anything, even if they are actually doing it wrong or imposing their ideology on anyone.

Maybe that’s why there were so many responses to a survey he sent out to get answers from ordinary Australians about why they garden. Many of us grow our own food when we can walk to the supermarket or visit a local park to grow our garden. Moloney has been thinking about the “why” of these things for decades.

For his new book Why Our Garden?third one after that Good Life Grows In 2023 and 2021 Good Lifeasked people what drew them to gardening. He also spoke to friends, neighbors and well-known Australians.

“Thanks to my work Horticulture Australia“I see so many gardeners and hundreds of gardens every year, and it’s amazing how far we’ve come to having a garden,” he says via Zoom from his home in Tasmania.

In 2013 Moloney, his partner Anton and their daughter Frida Maria moved to a 0.4ha property just outside Hobart. Tasmanians (and Horticulture Australia fans) will probably know this; it’s the bright pink house perched on a steep hillside that they’ve transformed into a thriving mini-farm with edible forest gardens, vegetable gardens, an orchard, and a flock of ducks, chickens, and goats. They used every bit of the space to grow or nurture everything they shared with the local community, from bees to vegetables and flowers.

But as Moloney discovered in his research for the book, even the smallest spaces can be just as enjoyable. “We spend a lot of time, energy and resources doing all of that, whether it’s a balcony, a backyard, a pasture,” he says.

Moloney was in her pink house as we spoke, a philodendron sprout trailing down behind her, though she claimed she wasn’t very good with houseplants. “But no matter what happens inside or outside, plants are beneficial,” he says.

“There’s something else for me about being in touch with the original soil and being outside. I think there’s something special there too – but indoor gardens are beautiful too and can definitely be beneficial. I never want people to think ‘oh, it’s not worth it because I don’t have a real piece of land’; it’s always valuable. The science behind the benefits has been around for decades, but like a number of things in our culture, I don’t think it’s very valuable.”

He wants this type of science to be integrated into education systems as a way to help people “live well in the world.”

Leveraging his “pretty chunky” social media following, Moloney started researching people a few years ago. “I also spoke to a few dozen people face to face: friends, colleagues and some well-known Australians, asking why they spend time gardening. I also asked some of the more unconventional gardeners. Some of these are pretty obvious, but others say: oh okay, I didn’t know this person gardened,” he says.

Why Our Garden? It blends philosophy, environmentalism, Indigenous and agricultural history, and is interspersed with survey responses from 1,500 people.

The book is divided into reasons for gardening—including “for our minds,” “for our bodies,” “connecting with nature,” and “building community”—but by far the most popular answer in Moloney’s multiple-choice survey was “for joy.” A whopping 94.6 percent of people responded, as Moloney puts it in the book, “a huge approval.”

Other participants told her they took up pottery to overcome grief; some found connections through community gardens, and others began growing food to save money.

Writer Tim Winton says gardening is an ancient instinct, “a body memory of being meteorless and anxious”, while musician Clare Bowditch says she draws on the lessons and creativity a garden can give us. “You just have to make the smallest effort,” he tells Moloney, “and nature’s creativity will meet you there halfway, and then come around some more. It doesn’t abandon you, it’s always present, it often sits there waiting to be enjoyed and exploited, and it comes back to that generosity again.”

Journalist Laura Tingle explains how she’s found gardening to focus her mind: “In your darkest moments, it’s so immersive. You get drawn into all the things going on around you without even watching.”

Moloney’s life has always revolved around gardening, both personally and professionally, and while she sees it as an act of resistance (she sees it as a form of solutions-based activism), a way to grow her own food, and connect with culture and history, she is an enthusiastic advocate of the benefits of digging in the ground for mental health.

He writes this clearly before Why Our Garden? Once he was fully on track, he found himself in a “dark and boring hole of self-doubt.”

“I hate that hole, but I find myself there every now and then,” he writes. “The ongoing voice in my mind was that I was worthless and nothing I did could possibly help the world, so why bother? I was on the verge of throwing it all away.”

In addition to tapping into the voice of her younger self, “Little Hannah,” Moloney also describes how spending time in her garden helps: “Digging things, planting things, mulching things, laying on the ground, breathing in the soil, and petting the goats reminds me that I am the least and most interesting thing in this ecosystem of life we ​​live in.”

The book includes research and data on how important access to green space can be. “Being outside, doing something, has proven to be extremely beneficial, and so I have shared stories of how it has helped me through some difficult situations and chronic health issues,” she says. “This cannot be taken lightly. It’s not going to solve everything and it’s not going to make it all roses, but it might make things a little better. OK, I’m still not feeling very well, but I’m a little better. That’s why a lot of GPs are increasingly telling people they need time in nature.”

Moloney speaks passionately about the increase in new public housing being built with little green space (“I have a real bee in my head about this”), writes (“It was an unexpected delight in my career!”) and how he hopes. Why Our Garden? It can inspire people to continue or even start gardening.

“I think this book reminds us of the place gardening holds in human evolution (past, present) and also how it can help us in the future,” he says. “I hope it reminds people that (gardens) aren’t just lawns and agapanthus—no judgment!—but also the importance of gardening. Not just in terms of bringing pleasure, nourishing us, or relaxing in them, but also the incredible political role gardens play in evolution and how we can be in the world.”

He hopes it can also get readers thinking about access to nature more broadly, not just through farming and gardening.

“Gardening is often our only access to nature as most people in Australia live in urban centres, and it’s our only access point. I’d like people to embrace that and accept that, oh yeah, these little 10 meters or whatever they’ve got, this is the world! We often forget that cityscapes are still landscapes,” he says. “But it’s in our DNA.”

Why Our Garden? (Affirm Press) was released.