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Avant Gardeners

Avant Gardeners

By: Madeleine Gasparinatos & Emily Allen
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About this listen

 With lots of enthusiasm and very little know how, Emily and Maddie love chatting about gardening, often with a glass of wine or cocktail in hand. In each fortnightly episode, we speak to people who inspire us in the garden, in order to unearth some much needed knowledge.2023
Episodes
  • Rachel Ward // Regenerative Farming, Small Farms, Nature and Creativity, Farmthru

    Rachel Ward // Regenerative Farming, Small Farms, Nature and Creativity, Farmthru
    Nov 25 2025
    ~ This season of Avant Gardeners is proudly supported by Blundstone's new series WorkLife. Launching in November and perfect for gardening. Find your local stockist here. ~ Rachel Ward's career began on screen, with standout roles in classics like The Thorn Birds before she turned her skills to directing acclaimed works including Beautiful Kate. In her sixties, Rachel's energy and focus shifted to regenerative agriculture, swapping film sets for fence lines and embarking on an ambitious overhaul of the beef farm her and her husband Bryan Brown had owned for thirty-odd years. Her brilliant documentary Rachel's Farm captures this shift as Rachel moves into her soil-health evangelist era, charting her mission to restore land and the food system. Today, she continues that momentum through Farmthru, her paddock-to-plate project designed to disrupt how regenerative farm produce is made available to consumers. Rachel lives, works and tends to her cattle on the land of the Gumbaynggirr people in the Nambucca Valley, New South Wales. Before we get to Rachel's chat, Maddie and Emily are drinking Greek Frappe (metrio me gala) even though it's 9 degrees outside. Recipe from Philoxenia: A Seat At My Table by Kon Karapanagiotidis. Emily is dreaming of abundance in the garden. Maddie is going to try to make her own tomato powder by Lauren at Oaklea Veggie Patch. They both visited good mate Pip Steele Wareham at The Garden at Moorfield and it was just like old times in that Pip was followed around by Maddie and Emily asking lots of annoying questions. We visited CERES Brunswick and want to start our own version in Cygnet. We're growing strawberries in pots and trying to get lots more creeping thyme in the garden (thank you, Connie Cao) Maddie is thinning her fruit trees (thank you, Katie Finlay) Rachel recommends: We Are The Ark by Mary Reynolds, The Creative Act by Rick Reuben, The Call of the Reed Warbler by Charles Massy, Deep Listening to Nature by Andrew Skeock Healthy Land, Happily Families and Profitable Businesses by David W Pratt The Soil Will Save Us by Kristen Ohlson, Holistic Management by Allan Savory Check our Rachel's new online-ordering, kerb pick up regenerative farm produce available at Farmthru.
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    56 mins
  • Mark Udovitch // Inner City Permaculture, bees, chickens, mushrooms, Permaculture in the Pub

    Mark Udovitch // Inner City Permaculture, bees, chickens, mushrooms, Permaculture in the Pub
    Nov 18 2025

    ~ This season of Avant Gardeners is proudly supported by Blundstone's new series WorkLife. Launching in November and perfect for gardening. Find your local stockist here. ~

    Mark Udovitch and his partner Lisa wisely used Covid lockdowns to establish an urban microfarm just south of the Sydney CBD, in the leafy suburb of Bardwell Valley. This steep and productive block is flourishing with veggies, fruit trees and indigenous plants. Mark and Lisa also share the property with European honeybees, a chicken coop, and their two young children.

    Mark is also a prolific preserver, fermenter and sourdough maker, is a member of the Sydney Edible Garden Trail Team, hosts a regular Permaculture at the Pub event, and is a Radiation Therapist in his spare time. He's passionate about getting more dirt under the fingernails of more people, and shares what he knows online.

    Mark lives, works and tends to his garden on Gadigal country, in NSW

    Maddie has - in a very roundabout way - made a Porto Tonico with Magnolia syrup. It's like gin and tonic, but port and tonic, (with or without magnolia syrup). Garnish it with an orange slice, cinnamon quill and rosemary.

    We're debriefing all things Citrus.
    Emily is on a full agpanthus rant, and turns out Maddie thought the singular of Agapanthus was...Agapantha. Lol. She didn't realise this wasn't the case until after we'd finished recording.

    Emily is on the green manure train, Maddie is hoping to grow Cucamelons.

    One of Emily's sisters bought her the book Horti-Curious by Ann Treneman and she's LOVING it.

    Maddie is obsessed with her Oak & Rose Razor Hoe.

    We learned heaps from attending one of the Grow Great Fruit pruning webinar.

    Things Mark mentions: Limestone Permaculture, Root Lab Mushrooms, Permaculture in the Pub

    Thanks for being here!
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    1 hr and 2 mins
  • Merlin Sheldrake // Fungi, Mushrooms, Fermenting, Entangled Life

    Merlin Sheldrake // Fungi, Mushrooms, Fermenting, Entangled Life
    Nov 11 2025

    ~ This season of Avant Gardeners is proudly supported by Blundstone's new series WorkLife. Launching in November and perfect for gardening. Find your local stockist here. ~

    Merlin Sheldrake is a mycologist, biologist, writer, and speaker with a background in plant sciences, microbiology, ecology, and the history and philosophy of science. He received a Ph.D. in tropical ecology from Cambridge University for his work on underground fungal networks in tropical forests in Panama.

    His book, Entangled Life, dives deep into the magical, mysterious and stranger-than-fiction world of fungi, explaining how they can show us lessons in resilience, cooperation and transformation. Entangled Life has sold more than a million copies worldwide, and what followed is a documentary called Fungi: Web of Life, narrated by Bjork.

    If you're lucky enough, you can catch Merlin across Australia and New Zealand as part of The Secret Life of Fungi. Tickets for this evening of storytelling and science are on sale now.

    Before we get to Merlin's chat, we're drinking our mate's Sticky Chai with a dash of Frangelico. Yum yum!

    Emily is giving her indoor plants some annual love. She's ticked off three trees on her random list (snowball viburnum, smoke bush and tai haku cherry!).

    Emily is continually searching for tube stock, and is loving Phil Dudman's tips on controlling stink bugs with a vaccuum cleaner. Her daughter Phoebe is the reigning queen of carrots.

    Emily is recommending Urban Nanna (aka Anna Matilda's) book Everyday Permaculture, illustrated by Brenna Quinlan.

    Maddie is up in arms about nurseries selling non-native Pig Face (hear why this is such a disasterous thing in this episode with Mindy Woods), she's creating a spanikopita garden, and has some bull chat - having just agisted a new animal in Quarter Pounder - a big, beefy Belted Galloway who has been tasked with one job.

    And she's gushing about Entangled Life (hardcopy or narrated audio version. Both are spectacular.)

    Thanks for being here!
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    45 mins
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