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How I planted 24 fruit trees, rock garden on quarter an acre
Njoki Njuguna (inset) has more than 24 varieties of fruit trees, which she has managed to plant along the perimeter wall to avoid clashing with her husband’s over the grass.
What you need to know:
- When you enter her home, your first view is Njoki’s rock garden built above her underground water tanks and her well-manicured fence of lavender.
It has taken Njoki Njuguna four years to make her childhood dream of having a garden of fruits trees and herbs come true.
“When I was growing up, we lived on a farm for some time and we had a lot of fruit. At that time my mom had so many fruit trees, even some pomegranate and the fig that most people did not know about. I knew then that when I got my own place, I would want to have some fruit trees,” she says adding, “Before we moved here, we had rented a house and our landlord had a very beautiful garden. That gave us an idea of what we might want.”
On a quarter of an acre, Njoki has managed to squeeze in a rock garden, an orchard of her fruit trees, a lawn of the Arabica grass and a vegetable garden.
“The grass is mainly my husband’s. He loves his grass. Normally it is very green but you found it not at its best,” says Njoki.
“Our costliest spending has been on the Arabica grass. There was a time we had to uproot the grass completely and plant it all over again because we did not know that whenever it rained, we would get three other types of grass that would grow. By the time we realised it, it was too infested and we had to do away with everything.
But right now, we have been able to catch it before it got completely infested. It is not clear to us what happens when it rains but this is the third time we are dealing with this,” the telecommunications engineer tells us of her struggle with the grass.
When you enter her home, your first view is Njoki’s rock garden built above her underground water tanks and her well-manicured fence of lavender.
“I have been growing succulents because there is only one foot of soil so it drains out very quickly,” she says.
On the rock garden area, she has put artificial grass and has grown drought-resistant plants such as the red and yellow gazania flower, the hardy lemon mint herb and the bay leaf plant.
Fruit trees
Njoki has more than 24 varieties of fruit trees. “My challenge is that my husband loves his grass so much that he tells me not to put anything on the vast grass area. But I have managed to squeeze my fruit trees along the perimeter wall. I am now waiting for some containers I ordered so that I can grow some in pots. I hope to have more than 30 varieties of fruit trees,” she says. She has to limit her fruit trees to a height of not more than five feet.
Among the fruit trees she has grown are lemon, guava, wild berry, golden berry, raspberry, blueberry, peach, pawpaw, avocado and mangoes.
She worries about her struggling grapefruit tree but hopes they will one day get to eat its fruit. On the other hand, she speaks fondly of her red guava tree. The pomegranate tree she says has been kind to them and they have eaten a lot of its fruits.
Herbs
Njoki’s other love is herbs.
“I like smelling the lemon verbena and I love cooking with the basil plant because it has a really good taste. My favourite herbs to look at are sage and lavender,” she says adding “I have tried to plant herbs around the house. When we moved here we had many spiders and mosquitoes but now with the herbs I have noticed a difference.”
Njoki also grows different varieties of mints, thyme, oregano, marjoram, lemon balm and the French lavender that she uses for decoration in the house.
Her advice for any beginner in gardening is, “Try herbs. It is hard to kill herbs. You do not need to fertilise them, in fact when you fertilise them, the leaves will be too big and lose taste.”
“When we got this piece of land, we were very disappointed with the shape because it was very narrow and long so we did not know what we were going to do with it but our architect was able to squeeze the house in a corner, which left us with a yard and a spot for our kitchen garden,” Njoki tells us her how garden came to be.
Her kitchen garden has a lot of green vegetables, including doodo, spinach, kale, and cherry tomatoes. She has also grown her onions in building stones that are also providing borders for her garden.
She has also squeezed in a place for her strawberries, which she has grown in gutters and repurposed liquid soap containers.
Cost
While she does not mention how much she spent on the garden, she agrees that gardening is a very expensive hobby but with good returns.
“I am always planting tomatoes but I still find myself buying tomatoes. The watering is very expensive as well,” she says.
Maintenance
Njoki does not have a regular watering schedule and says it all depends on the weather.
“If it is very hot, you may have to water every other day and it also depends on the plants. Strawberries, we have learnt the hard way, need a lot of water and sun. So my gardener uses his own judgement to know how much water they need depending on how hot that day is,” she says.
She tells us of her struggle to get the right gardener. “This is my third gardener and I think we have found one. I am a believer in letting people self-govern and I found that all the other gardeners were relying on me too much. This gardener is a fast learner and is passionate about gardening,” Njoki says.
Challenges
All my plants are grown organically so the problem with this is that if you are not keen, you will get a lot of infestations.
In her garden, she has grown plants in old tyres and old buckets or used containers. She repurposes a lot to reduce the cost of gardening. Geraniums are quite dominant in her garden.
“Not that they are my favourite but they are very easy to propagate.”
Njoki’s experience with gardening has been a series of experiments with wins and failures. Her hope is that she can grow more fruits, herbs and trees. She looks forward to a time when she will not need to buy fruits and her household can have fruits in season all through the year.
