The Writer's Plot

Ever Wondered What A Gardening Journalist’s Own Backyard Looks Like? We Talk To Jana Holmer To Find Out

- Jana Peter & Holly Holmer

Good Organic Gardening contributor Jana Holmer, husband Pieter and daughter Holly live on a 622m2 block in Newtown, an old suburb of Geelong on the outskirts of the CBD.

Formerly with international professional services firm Ernst & Young, Jana now describes herself as an author, builder, mother and carer. Her pastimes are writing children’s stories and making pasta and natural cures for ailments. She also recently invented an educational card game.

Then, of course, there’s gardening. She came to it early in life when, at the age of five, she and her family lived in a Californian bungalow on a cobblestone laneway in the Melbourne inner suburb of Fitzroy, which in the early 70s was “a mix of timberyards, an industrial estate and rough housing on narrow streets”, she recalls.

“Mum dug up all the lawns to grow corn, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, chillies, onions, garlic, silverbeet and different types of string beans and lima beans. There was a huge fig tree in the front yard producing massive, juicy purple figs. I had to walk through the mud and help sow seeds in the garden.”

It was a poor, mainly migrant neighbourhood and Jana’s family did it tough as well. “For dinner we were lucky to eat a slice of buttered bread and a small chop with tomato. Neighbours across the road bred pigs and we often shared each other’s harvest and their meat.

“We got lucky one day,” she laughs. “A chook flew into our yard and we ate it. The next day the Italian neighbour had a boxing match with my father. Little did he know that my father knew how to box.

“There was no telling where the chook came from; most migrants in the street had muddy yards and bred chooks, ducks and pigs.