We aren't the kind of people that are methodical in our approach to life. We can't write a budget and stick to it, I can't follow a recipe without improvising, and being both air signs, we're likely to change our mind half way through anyway.

Such is our approach to garden design - haphazard, free-form, and most definitely organic - both in how we cultivate and grow, and characterised by a natural, harmonious development rather than something forced, planned and rigid.

**I'm going to apologise for the lack lustre photos, as it's Winter here in Australia and we just don't have the spectacular stuff going on that you do in other realms.

When we first moved onto our five acres, there were 5 existing gum trees and a hell of a lot of grass - in fact, from our back door step to the gum plantation at the far corner, all there *was* was grass! We had a lot of chickens free ranging and so the first thing we did was build an enclosure smack bang outside the back doorstep. Jamie argued that he'd rather it out of the way, but I wanted to go straight outside the door and collect what I needed for cooking. Thus, that was our start - the centre from which all things would grow.
https://ipfs.busy.org/ipfs/QmfS13g38vNa2QBGTKKFN9fuiBgz1pbS2nr2Foc5L5CGah

Please don't judge my drawing skills, but this is basically our layout mocked up with pen and fluoros, and I'm sure I don't need to say that it is ABSOLUTELY not to scale!

Leading on from the vegetable patch and just behind it are three compost bays. We've just made a garden path with a dragonfly mosaic that leads all the way to the compost, which means I can walk out the back door and all the way through without getting muddy feet - if that's not luxury I don't know what is!

To the left of the vegetable patch is a small garden with a lemon, lime, nectarine and apple, as well as about 8 artichoke plants that form a magnificent grey green forest in the Spring. In this bed I've also got rhubarb, garlic chives, thyme, marigolds, oregano and mint. I've cut down a lot on my herbs, keeping it to the ones that I use a lot of - it's simply too much to keep a big witches garden watered in the summer, and I've started to make sure I'm just planting stuff that I know will survive, prosper, work in symbiosis, attract bees, and not suck all the water up! We plant as much as possible with the bees in mind, and they love our plentiful comfrey as well as the Australian natives - the trick is to plant stuff that will flower at all different times.

Speaking of bees, we've got a borrowed hive that is checked by our beekeeper friend Mark. It's early days, but we're really looking forward to our own honey. He takes a cut for looking after the hive and we get the rest - it's a great deal! He has them dotted all over the shire.

It's all starting to work in a food forest kinda way now and look after itself, but it did take a lot of hard graft and some good rain and experimenting to get the basic layout done, before in filling it with smaller stuff. Now, it almost - almost - maintains itself.

It really was so unplanned, but all the while, we had this clear goal - to create a place of beauty and harmony, bring in birds, have a sustainable and organic garden, be a little self sufficient. We've still got a way to go, but we're definitely getting there.

Beyond the compost and to the right are about 5 elderberries trees - 2 native ones and 3 larger ones. We loved eldertrees as they reminded us of our other home in the UK and we wanted to make elderflower champagne, fritters, wine, elderberry syrup and so on. There's also a few rhubarbs in there as well as redcurrants, blackberries, blackcurrants, a pomegranate and a grapevine to the west. There's also a grape vine to the west of the vegie patch as that helps shade it in the summer, and one on our front verandah. As we face north, that's where the sun comes in, so the grape provides us shade too.

Beyond that is a few fruit trees - quinces, a Japanese plum, and an apple, and beyond that again, two rows of raspberries, a few plums, another quince, some more olives (if you look at our plan, we have olives everywhere - they grow really well in our climate, which can be on par with Spain).

Moving back up toward the house now, you'll see our fire bath and another vegie patch, more olives and some natives.

Beyond that, the gazebo. The gazebo was built by my Dad and Jamie, and sits right in front of the bus. It's a great place sit sit in the hammock and watch the birds flutter over the fish pond, shelter from wind, rain and sun, have a fire and entertain guests. We're going to put in an earth oven one day in that area too. There's also an outdoor shower next to the bath - we just use a black camping bag at the moment but will rig up something fancier one day. I love how I can escape into the bus and feel like I'm surrounded by trees and birds. Well, I kinda am - funny to think how once the bus was just a big white blob sitting in a big patch of grass.

Of course we've got our big sheds for gardening equipment, recycled stuff ready to be used, Jamie's mechanics and car stuff, surfboards and the like. They are over on the western edge, including more olives, some more fruit trees, gum trees and even an aquaponics set up which isn't quite successful yet and needs some work, but we've been able to farm our own trout and smoke it so that's a success. We're super lucky that we don't have any one living there as it's council land and a water reuse facility, hence, just trees and cows. It's where the sun sets so it looks really beautiful as the sun is going down.

We've got an awful lot of natives at our place too - gum trees for fire wood one day, grevilleas, banksias and the like. Some areas of our place are really dry and we can't get the water to it, so that's just mainly natives. But I like the natives around the garden too - you know they're going to last all year around, provide food for birds and bees, and give a bit of colour when the elderberries, birches, poplars and fruit trees lose their leaves. Australian plants are really good structural plants too and have their own purpose and aesthetic. We make sure that we have a lot of water for them, as it gets so hot here in the summer. When we first moved here there were barely any birds - now the whole place is alive with them. The blackbirds scratch in the mulch, the silver eyes and pardelotes flit over the fishpond, the honeyeaters swing off grevillea, magpies carry on like loons and annoy the chickens just for a laugh, cockatoos screech in the pines and steal our fruit with the rosellas, and above them all, wedgetails eagles soar, and the occasional pelican or ibis flies past, even geese, once in a while. Well, that'll probably do it - that's our unplanned garden design. I wrote this in response to a contest held by @off-gridonline , which you can find [here](https://steemit.com/gardening/@offgrid-online/contest-looking-for-your-garden-layouts-existing-or-planned-6-sbd) - but it was super fun writing about it anyway. Please feel free to comment below - I love chatting and nattering about my garden!

Here's a few links that might flesh out our place a little more for you:

Compost Heap and Path Construction, Mosaic
Vegie Garden Going Strong, Autumn
Why we planted trees: The Twenty Year Promise
Maples in Autumn
Goshawk Visitor
The Bus that Never Went
Smoking Our Home Grown Trout

I'm also totally honoured to be a passenger on the #ecotrain - check out this hashtag for some pretty amazing posts permaculture to meditation, environmental issues to food forests - I highly recommend checking out this tag as you're guaranteed of sweeeetness!

Plus, I'm super excited and honoured to be part of @tribesteemup - a heap of amazing crew who all post quality posts about helping the Earth and humanity and generally making the world a better place. You should definitely check out the #tribesteemup trail to find some quality writing.