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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
  • Jodi Wilson // A Brain That Breathes, Soft Fascination, The Power of Pottering in the Garden, Books for you to read

    Jodi Wilson // A Brain That Breathes, Soft Fascination, The Power of Pottering in the Garden, Books for you to read
    Jan 5 2026

    Jodi Wilson is a bestselling author of four books, a health journalist and postpartum doula. Several years ago, she and her family packed their lives into a caravan, and set of in search of adventure, and a more simple life. After two years on the road they put down roots in Tasmania. It is here where she's embraced gardening, and written her most recent book, A Brain That Breathes, out today.

    Jodi lives, writes and gardens with her partner and their four children on the land of the punnilerpanner people in north western Tasmania

    Before we get to this thought-provoking chat, Emily and Madeleine are drinking Archie Rose Straight Dry gin with some home made purple elderflower cordial.

    Emily is regretting purchasing a Ginko tree, and the agapanthus keep rearing their ugly head.
    She is loving her Cerastium tomentosum - snow in summer - and Maddie's cutting is also doing quite well.

    Maddie is obsessed with Sage, and wants to propagate more. She's also tried her hand at sage sticks. She's got a picnic blanket in the post and is excited for more outdoor eating-and-drinking sessions. Calendula is back, and in some beautiful colours, and she is recommending Why Women Grow, by Alice Vincent.

    Jodi has a HUGE list of books she recommends for summer, and or anytime. We've already read a couple of them and they are excellent. Can highly recommend her recommendations!

    -The Mushroom Tapes by Chloe Hooper, Helen Garner, and Sarah Krasnostein
    -Heart the Lover by Lily King
    -Sandwich and Wreck by Catherine Newman
    -The Octopus and I and A Catalogue of Love by Erin Hortle
    -The Hiding Place by Kate Mildenhall
    -The Ten Year Affair by Erin Somers
    -Consider Yourself Kissed by Jessica Stanley

    We're also banging on and singing the praises of libraries, AGAIN!
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    59 mins
  • Emma Horswill // Earthenry Flower Farm, Dahlias, Cover Crops, Pulse Watering, Ranunculus

    Emma Horswill // Earthenry Flower Farm, Dahlias, Cover Crops, Pulse Watering, Ranunculus
    Dec 2 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. ~

    Emma Horswill was a madkeen gardener with a fine arts degree and a 9-acre block. With plans for a veggie garden and orchard, Emma turned her hand to flower farming in 2019, and since then has gone from strength to strength.

    This family run farm, called Earthenry, now grows well over 100 different varieties of seasonal and field-grown blooms, and has cultivated a dedicated community of volunteers and devotees who flock to the farm for events including garden and gossip, twilight flower picking, pick your own mornings, workshops, and seedling sales.

    Emma also breeds her own dahlias, makes made-to-order bouquets and sells organically-grown seeds. Emma, her husband Greg and their two teenage children live, work and garden in the beautiful township of Snug, on the lands of the Nuenonne people in Tasmania.

    Before we get to that, Maddie & Emily and drinking a Fin Wines' Dandelions and Bumblebees

    Emily is talking about pea straw, her broody chickens and some tips she's learned from Nicky Husted, aka Purely Chickens.

    We both went to the Cygnet Garden Market and bought a literal boot load of plants including Mint! Hurray. Chocolate mint, peppermint and basil mint.

    Emily is loving The Garden Curator's column in Graziher magazine about observing where the early and late light moves in the garden, and that's where to plant those frothy, tall grasses to catch the light.

    Maddie is loving the cows, Hetty McKinnon's dukkah from the Community cookbook, and having garden chats with Emily.

    This is our last episode of 2026. Thank you for being here. It means the world.

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    1 hr and 6 mins
  • 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
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