Auckland desk worker on weekdays. In the backyard most weekends.
I'm Gil. This is what I do to relax.
My dad taught me to garden when I was a kid - how to double dig a bed, how to tell when a beetroot is ready to pull, when to pick a pumpkin, how to lose an entire weekend without noticing. There were rentals after that, and I always had a little garden going somewhere.
In December 2019 we bought our own place, a new build on bare clay with a bit of topsoil raked over it and a scattering of grass seed. I put in a couple of small gardens that first year and most of it barely grew. The soil was the problem, and no amount of hoping was going to fix it.
So I started building instead. Garden boxes first, then a few more, then the shed, and the chickens turned up about the same time. The timber walkway came later. I've moved the grapefruit tree three times since, until it ended up somewhere it was happy.
Most of it I build myself, cut and assembled on weekends. I'm a bit of a perfectionist about that part, so it all goes in square and level, whether or not anyone else would ever notice.
Six years on, I've worked out how much I love it, and how much I need it after a week of screens. The garden is small and I keep it honestly: the wins and the failures both go in the journal. Colleagues don't ask how my weekend was anymore - they ask what I ended up doing in the garden.
My dad, who taught me all of this
Every bed I dig, I think of him. He's the one who taught me how to double dig, how to keep a row of leeks going all winter, when to pull something out and when to give it another week. Most of what I know came from standing next to him with a spade, not from any book.
He had a large garden on a quarter acre section, and he was out in it nearly every evening. We hardly ever bought vegetables - beans, leeks, beetroot, pumpkins, yams, whatever was ready that night is what we ate.
One season he decided the entire quarter acre should be in beans. That story is here →
I don't think he ever knew how much of it would stick, all these years later, in a different garden, in a different city. But it's his method in every bed here - and I think about him every weekend I'm out there.
Auckland, New Zealand
A mild, mostly frost-free climate (zone 10 territory) with clay-heavy soil that needed a lot of compost before anything wanted to grow in it. Summers handle tomatoes, corn, and courgettes without much fuss; winters are for brassicas and broad beans. If you're gardening somewhere similar, most of what ends up in the journal should translate.
Questions welcome
If you've got a question about anything I've grown, killed, or built, drop me a line. I answer eventually - usually after the watering's done.
hello@gilthegardener.co.nz