Denistone – Moss House Garden (Sunday only)

Margaret Mossakowska has spent her childhood surrounded by ornamental and productive gardens her parents created. Once she acquired her own block of land, she designed a permaculture garden with the primary goal to provide the family with food, medicinal and fibre-producing plants. It was filmed for the ‘Gardening Australia‘ show in 2016

Moss House is a nine year old large suburban food garden located on a steep slope. In it’s design it features rainwater storing trenches (‘swales’), twelve raised vegetable beds (eight of which are self-watering), large composting bays and worm farms, a flock of six hens enjoying a ‘chicken forest’, two beehives of native stingless bees, insectary gardens, a habitat pond and more. It serves as an educational facility for community groups and for the last six years has been opened to the public a couple of times each year

The garden contains edible and medicinal herbs, a wide variety of annual vegetables grown using a crop rotation system, around 30 fruit trees planted along water-holding swales together with perennial vegetables; a composting pit/banana circle and native plant habitats. The produce is either eaten fresh or preserved in various ways for storage; pickles, chutneys, dried herbs, tinctures and fermented foods fill the pantry.

Very important parts of the Moss House garden design are rainwater storage and garden waste management. Together with soil growing and food and medicine production they contribute to the household’s self-sufficiency and sustainability.