Gardener Folks - Steven Wells

Welcome to Gardener Folks. Hi It’s Steven here and it’s now time to begin sharing with you the uplifting stories and insights of gardeners. My desire is for Gardener Folks to be part of the collective that celebrates and highlights gardeners with the aim that it helps to inspire and encourage each of us in our own gardening efforts. To introduce the style and format of Gardener Folks to you I want to start off by sharing about myself. I feel it is important for you to know a little about who is behind Gardener Folks right from the beginning. Following this, Gardener Folks will then be all about other gardeners and honouring them.

I hope you enjoy the read. Happy gardening.

Steven sitting in his balcony garden

Can you please provide a background of yourself?

I’ve been gardening in both personal and professional contexts across my life, gardening in my childhood with my family, while living in various rental properties later in life and also when I’ve had my own place to create a garden. I grew up in South Australia and moved to Victoria in my 20’s.

I work in public healthcare as a nurse, a horticultural therapist and also a gardens and grounds coordinator at a large hospital in Melbourne. It’s an enjoyable mixture of part-time roles. I started my nursing career in adult and paediatric cancer care, then moved to adult acquired brain injury rehabilitation. While nursing I chose to study horticulture with the thought to become a garden designer, however I felt that I’d been nursing and working in public healthcare for a reason, so I decided to head back to my healthcare setting work in 2003 to nurse after working a short while in retail nurseries. This is where I started a horticultural therapy program and began developing therapeutic hospital gardens. This has brought about so many enriching horticultural related experiences that have connected me with wonderful horticultural people that I now call friends.

I’ve co-exhibited a show garden at the Melbourne International Flower & Garden Show, been a volunteer at the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne Growing Friends, helped established Therapeutic Horticulture Australia, been a guest presenter on Gardening Australia, had my own previous home garden shared on Gardening Australia (Wells World and Backyard Wellness), Better Homes & Gardens, The Gardenist, Bean There Dug That and The Garden Gurus. I’m a Churchill Trust Fellow and Paul Harris Fellow. I now volunteer with and support Open Gardens Victoria and the 3CR Gardening Show and I attend the Hurstbridge Sow & Grow Gardening Club. And I’m fortunate to have a golden shovel too thanks to the support from Gardening Australia and their enthusiastic gardening community, to be voted the Gardening Australia 2012 Gardener of the Year.

Don’t let anyone tell you that horticulture and gardening is boring - there’s a wonderful world of opportunities and gardening folks to connect with and to be part of a great community.

How did you get interested in gardening? 

I’ve been fortunate that I’ve been around gardeners throughout my life who have shaped my gardening. My parents, Rosemary and Ken Wells, have been passionate home gardeners and very active garden club members for over 60 years, with mum also being an accomplished floral artist. My parents, uncle and grandparents were also market gardeners and orchardists, growing cauliflower and cabbage crops and oranges with some stone fruits which they sold mainly in their local township of Murray Bridge in South Australia. They also grew other vegetable and flower crops for seed harvesting, selling seeds to companies like Yates and Hendersons in Australia and Clucas in Ormskirk, England, during the Second World War. 

I have many memories of gardening while growing up, fond ones include eating fresh strawberries and peas with mum as we harvested them from our large home vegetable patch and as a teenager helping dad with building some garden projects which then lead to me being given the opportunity to build some small garden projects by myself. I perhaps have less fond memories of doing the more mundane things like mowing the lawns, especially our lawn tennis court, but that’s where you get to learn that if you want to enjoy using it, you need to be part of maintaining it! With that heritage and those experiences, there’s probably a strong tinge of green blood flowing through my veins which I’m very thankful for.

Dad (Ken Wells) working in the field of cauliflowers

Describe your gardening experiences now? What does gardening and your garden look like for you?

Gardening at home is quite simple for me now. I previously gardened around a unit in the suburbs where I had immense fun gardening and creating my own plant filled playground from bare earth over 19 years. My #gardenatNo5 was a fulfilling and enjoyable time in my life and I have very fond memories of it all - having shared doing garden building projects with my parents, to immersing myself in the creating, designing and building of so many fun and interesting spaces and also seeing plants come to life in my creations. However I decided to sell it and hand it onto others to enjoy, knowing that I was a passing custodian of that property, and also needing to have a simpler approach to my life. I’m now currently enjoying a life chapter of living in the city in a rental apartment with a narrow north facing balcony that has a veranda overhang. It is predominantly a shady space that I have filled with some robust potted plants brought from my previous garden. It is my little pocket of greenery in the sky. I have a lot less gardening to do here but in my spare time I’m now getting out and about to discover and immerse myself in various garden spaces, parks and pockets of greenery in the city. 

As I traverse this current life chapter I am aware that it is also a valuable period of time for me. It is in itself its own chapter, but it is also a period of time that will help me to move into the next one. It’s a time to recalibrate, to refocus, to change neural pathways and to perhaps help me to look at life and gardening with renewed enthusiasm and opportunities. I look forward to seeing what my home gardening evolves into.

Professionally, I continue to work as a horticultural therapist and also the gardens and grounds coordinator at Austin Health here in Melbourne. The HT role is one day a week and involves working with patients utilising gardening activities and time spent in the gardens as part of their rehabilitation. The Coordinator role involves overseeing the gardens management of our organisation, the garden contractors and also the development of any new gardens that we strive to implement.  

The balcony garden, with potted plants brought from the previous garden.

What words of wisdom do you have to impart to other gardeners?

Comparison is the thief of joy. Please don’t compare yourself to others. meander along your own gardening path. Do you and your gardening, like no one else can.

I feel that comparison is the stumbling point of many gardeners who feel that they can’t do gardening or have a garden like other people. By all means be inspired by other people, learn from their experiences and gardening efforts, but please don’t get caught up in the comparison trap. I’ve heard too many people say that that their gardening efforts are not as good as other people. Please embrace your own pace and joys of your own gardening. In doing that you may just inspire someone else! During my gardening and garden projects I have certainly enjoyed looking at what others have designed and created but I was always driven to “Steven-ify” what I did in my own garden so that it would have my style.

What do you enjoy the most about your gardening? 

Working as a horticultural therapist connecting with people who have significant health changes and challenges such as brain injuries, spinal cord injuries or strokes, the things that bring me the most enjoyment is being amongst the deeper layers of the benefits of gardening. It’s what gardening represents and achieves for different people - the increase in self confidence, the sense of achievement, the progression of skills/strengthening while doing gardening, and the essence of calmness that I see in people when they spend time in the hospital gardens. During their time of recovery, acknowledging that life may not get back to what it was before their hospitalisation, people benefit from being encouraged to see what they can still do, while for them they’re constantly reminded of what they aren’t able to do. I recently received a thank you card from a gent and his wife who I worked with and what they shared reminds me of what I enjoy the most about gardening for me. The little things we do can make the biggest difference for someone else.

Thank you card from participant of the horticultural therapy program

Who has inspired or influenced you in your gardening pursuits? 

The foundational influencers of my gardening are my parents. Thanks to their support, I was allowed to play in the garden, mow the lawns, rake the leaves, pick the flowers, harvest the fruit and vegetables, create some landscape projects and develop my interest in gardening. It’s these things that can be the most common part of our lives growing up and yet for me it’s on reflection as an adult that I truely appreciate what it has meant for me now. I so wish that I could go back to that time and delve more into those moments with them, to ask more questions, to listen more intently and embed those experiences into my memory. 

And then there are the other influencers along the journey of my adult gardening era. The likes of horticultural educators who have inspired me to learn, to dig deeper (intellectually and literally) and to embrace the wonderful world of horticulture. And to that, I’d like to thank John Rayner, my horticulture lecturer and teacher of various subjects at Burnley. John, you’re a legend!

If you could be a plant in your garden what would you be and why?

It would be my all-time favourite plant the Ornamental Grape Vine (Vitis vinifera), which I grew up calling it as a glory vine. My parents grew one in my childhood home and while I could extol it’s virtues of it’s delightful Summer cooling shade under it’s dense lush green canopy and also it’s opposing Winter pruned-back bareness that allowed the warming Winter sun to flood into our indoor living room, it would most definitely be it’s vibrant Autumn red colour. My most favourite photo of me as a child is standing under our glorious red vine looking up to mum. Mum was clothed appropriately in her red outfit, which I’m sure she had most likely made herself. She was always on point! When my parents moved from that house I collected some of the autumnal vine leaves and placed them into a jar and I still have it 33 years later! Not quite as vibrant red, but the tangible visual memory continues to travel with me.

Steven, his mum Rosemary Wells and their cat Ricky underneath the Ornamental Grape Vine

Ornamental Grape Vine leaves

Do you have a quote or life motto that inspires you to live and/or garden by? 

“Ask questions, always ask questions”. If you want to know more about plants and gardening, be at ease with asking questions to learn more. Gardeners are always willing to share their experiences and knowledge when asked. There is great depths of wisdom in a gardener.

And couple with that, “listen to hear, not to respond”. Truely listen, and listen intentionally. You’ll learn so much more if you harness the skill of attentive hearing, rather than your desire to provide your response. You’ll still get your chance to respond, but listen first.

What do you either lie awake at night or find yourself day dreaming about with your garden, gardening pursuits or the horticultural world? 

When I had my previous garden and I was in the process of developing any new garden projects when I was lying in bed trying to go to sleep my brain would be on “zing” mode and I couldn’t fall asleep. Visually I’d describe this like multiple players hitting the snooker balls without waiting for their individual turn. The creative side of my brain would be buzzing - ideas would be flowing, I’d be visualising what they would look like, which would in turn generate new ideas, and then I’d recalibrate those new ideas, which in turn often generated new ideas. Simultaneously, my process-driven side of the brain would also be buzzing, determining how I’d construct these creative ideas while still maintaining the overall vision for the project.

Aside from that, on a larger horticultural scale, I do despair a little at the general lack of awareness by the broad population about the importance of plants and our environment. I don’t feel that it is valued at all. Whether that be at a localised everyday engagement level for people or the broader out of everyday sight level. I just wish we could all see the amazing intricate details of our natural world, from cellular to global level, to then fully appreciate how absolutely awesome and amazing it is and that it is our priority to look after it.

What is your most favourite tool to use when gardening? 

In general my trusty secateurs are my most used gardening tool. However its companion, the secateur holster pouch that I attach to my belt/pocket, is my most favourite tool item. Being able to slide the secateurs back into it’s “home” that then moves with me as I’m gardening has meant that I have rarely lost my trusty secateurs in the garden, the compost pile or the garden waste recycle bin! 

Secateur pouch

How do you think we can encourage, inspire and support more people to be gardeners?

Good question Steven! I’ve included this question into the mix for all Gardener Folks to respond to because I’m genuinely interested to see more people gardening and potentially getting into the field of horticulture, and I want to know from the collective brains trust how we can do this. I’m really excited by some of the responses that are coming in from Gardener Folks which you’ll get to read soon. 

Personally I think its about sharing with friends, family and soon to be friends more about gardening and why we garden. Sharing about how it benefits us personally, collectively and globally. Oh and join a garden club or two - you’ll be amazed at the wealth of gardening knowledge everyone in the club has!

What are some valuable things you’ve learnt while being a gardener?

Gardening is a great humbler. You may think you know all things that are to be known and that you’ve got all the possible scenarios worked out. And then the garden gently, although sometimes brutally, reminds you that you do in fact still have things to learn. The weather patterns change, the usual cycles of insects living in your garden alter, or some unknown growth appears out of your soil. But that is all okay, the garden continues, and we’re fortunate to be able to then develop more gardening knowledge and skills.