While I am able to appreciate a beautiful garden filled primarily with flowers, foliage and trees, I find in my travels that the gardens that really get me excited are vege gardens.
They don't have to be pretty, just the sight of vege plants mingling with a few flowers and maybe a few fruit trees, all providing food for the table, will do it.
I love peaking over a garden fence and checking out what is growing, how they are growing it, and hoping that maybe I'll pick up a few tips or get inspired to try something new in my own vege patch.
Whether it is gardening in a container like this tire or on the side of the river as the waters subside after a rainy season as it is here in Northern Thailand, I feel my heart beat a little faster.
On a larger scale - preparing a small field for planting in Ecuador.
These small garden patches are often fertilised by the cows or goats that live around the homestead and the bedding straw from the rice harvest.
They don't have to be pretty, just the sight of vege plants mingling with a few flowers and maybe a few fruit trees, all providing food for the table, will do it.
I love peaking over a garden fence and checking out what is growing, how they are growing it, and hoping that maybe I'll pick up a few tips or get inspired to try something new in my own vege patch.
Whether it is gardening in a container like this tire or on the side of the river as the waters subside after a rainy season as it is here in Northern Thailand, I feel my heart beat a little faster.
Gardening at high altitudes like here in Ecuador show veges growing in yet another type of climate.
It doesn't take a lot of fancy equipment. Just a sturdy hoe and a strong back.
On a larger scale - preparing a small field for planting in Ecuador.
Walking through the hillside terraces of Nepal one can see narrow beds each only big enough for a single type of vege in it, and maybe a few self sown flowers growing around the edges.
These small garden patches are often fertilised by the cows or goats that live around the homestead and the bedding straw from the rice harvest.
A simple bamboo fence is enough to keep wandering livestock out of the garden patch.
Many of the gardens in the tropics are set up so that the watering is done by diverting a stream into the garden and flooding the paths between the beds. The water soaks in sideways into the beds.
How about this hydroponic setup growing several varieties of lettuce in large bamboo in Thailand.
It is hard to beat the beauty of a corn patch surrounding a slate roof house and a background of snow capped mountains.
This stone wall helps keep the chili pepper plant warm at the high altitudes of northern India.
The corn has been harvested and is now drying on the roof in the late summer in preparation for storing for the winter.
These gardens are all productive and beautiful in their simplicity. Often tended with simple tools and the healthiest of fertilisers - compost made on the spot.
I come away inspired, and get excited about returning to my own garden, and trying out some of the new ideas I have picked up on my travels.
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