Ripe For The Picking

When she dug up her lawn for a vegetable and fruit garden, Jill Mettler of Cape Town not only gained a supply of fresh produce, her health improved dramatically

- Melanie Farrell

Jill Mettler wakes up at 5am every day, eager to see what she can harvest from her garden. Will the aubergines be ready for a moussaka? Perhaps there will be enough cucalmelons (lemon-tasting cucumbers resembling mini watermelons) for a refreshing salad? But it wasn’t always like this.

When Jill and her husband, Thomas, a Swiss master butcher, bought the house 18 years ago, it was, as Jill describes it, “a big worn-out lawn and a couple of straggly shrubs that could withstand the dog traffic.”

Even though the Mettlers have two big dogs of their own, including a Great Dane, the garden bears little resemblance to the dust-bowl when they moved in. Coming from a foodie family, Jill has always enjoyed cooking. As she had a catering business at the time, she was keen to establish a vegetable garden so she could have fresh produce on hand.

Originally the garden wasn’t ideal for growing edibles. There was a lot of shade created by tall eugenia hedges and trees on all four boundaries. As the house is set right at the back of the plot, there was no other place for a vegetable garden but right in front.

The first step was to remove some of the eugenias to bring in more sun. Thomas then dug up a section of the lawn immediately in front of the house where Jill planted a small veggie patch, which was protected from the dogs by pallets.