10 years ago my son played a game at his cousins birthday party. He had to wear a man’s suit jacket, sit like a gentleman at a dining table and eat a block of chocolate using a knife and fork. The winner was the kid who ate the most chocolate. My son wasn’t that kid.

Living in ‘lockdown’ is like eating a block of chocolate with a knife and fork. It sounds like it ought to be easy. It sounds like it could be fun, a bit of a holiday even. But actually, it’s not. And I’m one of the lucky ones.

I have a house, I have a garden, I have a husband and teenage son who I love hanging out with, I have wild green spaces within 5 minutes walk from home, I have enough money to buy food and pay the mortgage, I have family and dear friends to connect with, I have good neighbours and I have 2 dogs.

Dogs are loving lockdown; they’ve never had it so good. They’re having more love and more walks then they ever imagined possible. Our 2 dogs take our minds off the ‘bigger picture’. It’s the ‘bigger picture’ that’s scares the crap out of us. Most New Zealanders, like me, have family or friends overseas. Watching Covid-19 work its way through every country is like watching a line of dominoes falling.

Our dog Moussa is 11 months old. He’s still a puppy. In the last 6 days of lockdown theres been a lot of collateral damage. Yesterday Moussa peed on my sons top and ate one of my husband’s slippers. The day before that he destroyed a plastic watering can, ate 2 tubes of lip gloss, a packet of seeds and a recipe book. Basil Brush has had 3 near misses and he’s lucky he still has his tail. Basil Brush is a stuffed toy. I rescued him from the rubbish bin of a charity shop. At the moment he’s sitting on the bedroom windowsill facing the street. He’s taking part in the kids nationwide ‘Bear Hunt’. Moussa loves Basil Brush.

For the next 4 weeks, probably longer, I have to stay in my neighbourhood. We’ve been told that we can’t do anything dangerous, anything that has the potential to involve emergency services or put people in hospital. I guess this means I can’t climb the ladder and clean the gutters.

Our government has told us to stay in our ‘bubble’. The only people I can hug are my husband, son and 2 dogs. I can’t visit anyone. No one is allowed to visit me. All of this is perfectly reasonable under the circumstances.

Lockdown was announced last Monday. Our government gave us 2 days to get ready. Lots of people panicked. They bought a whole lot of things they didn’t need. Things like toilet paper, running machines and chest freezers. Some of these same people bought up all the vegetable seedlings at garden centres. For the first time ever, garden centres had empty shelves.

I chatted to one of the garden experts at Mitre 10 about this. I asked him if he thought gardening would become popular again, once people discovered the love of growing things. He said ‘no’. He reckoned there would be a big fail rate, people’s seedlings would die and they’d give up. ‘They don’t know the basics,’ he said. ‘They don’t know that in order to grow vegetables you need good soil, good light and regular watering.’

I’m new to vegetable growing. I used to think that people who grew vegetables were either ‘end-of-the-world’ types or dullards. Why grow a cabbage when you could grow a rose? I took up vegetable growing in spring last year, but it’d be fair to say my heart wasn’t in it. Back then, vegetable gardening was only going to be a minor interest, something to dabble in. That all changed a couple of weeks ago.

Once Covid-19 arrived in New Zealand it seemed to me that it was only a matter of time before we started having some of the problems that Italy and Spain are facing - namely unstoppable community transmission and a devastated health system. I couldn’t do anything about either of those things but I could grow things. Suddenly the idea of growing food seemed really appealing. Growing roses, on the other hand, seemed irrelevant.

I’ve set myself a challenge. I want to grow as much food as I can in my driveway garden and I’m only using containers. Here’s what I already know. I know that I need to have top quality soil if I want to grow top quality veggies. The soil quality in containers drops off quickly thanks to hungry plants. I’ll need to continually add compost. All of the garden centres and landscape suppliers are shut for the next 3 weeks, probably longer. I’m totally reliant on making my own compost and special soil teas.

Here’s how the garden looked last week.

Growing veggies in containers has its challenges. Deciding which veggies to grow is the biggest. There’s no point growing plants that take up a lot of space but don’t produce a lot of food. I said ‘no’ to veggies like cabbages and brussel sprouts. I said ‘yes’ to veggies that grow vertically like beans and yes to cut and come again greens like rocket.

I’ve planted broad beans, silver beet, beetroot, kale, carrots and leeks. I’ve planted lots of green crops like rocket, winter savory and corn salad. I planted a dwarf apple tree and 2 more lemon trees too. Some veggies are super veggies because every part of them can be eaten. Beetroot is one of these vegetables. It’s root, leaves and seeds can be eaten. In small veggie gardens I reckon It’s important to grow food that can’t be bought at the supermarket like French sorrel and cape gooseberries.

My new compost bin is brilliant. I love having it right in the veggie garden. I can put finished crops and kitchen waste straight into it. When the compost is ready I’ll be able to shovel it into the nearby containers. I think I’ll need two bins in the future. According to my information booklet, a full compost bin takes a few weeks to turn into compost. I could have a second bin going while I’m waiting for the first. The government announced last night that people could have essential items delivered to them, things like fridges and heaters. I wonder if compost bins are considered essential?

I’ve planted kale in half the potato bed. Once I harvest the last of the potatoes I’ll plant a second kale crop.

I’m really excited about growing broad beans. I’ve read all sorts of interesting things. Once the bean pods start growing I’m supposed to snap off the top leaves to encourage the plants energies go into bean production and not leaf production. These snapped off leaves and stems can be wilted in butter and eaten.

Next year I’m going to take better care of my tomatoes. I have 8 neglected plants and they’re still producing a punnet of tomatoes a day.

I’ve planted silverbeet in the bed above (close-up below). Beside it are my coriander plants which have gone to seed. In the pot on the ground is Vietnamese coriander, Persicaria odorata (the plant with the long pointy leaves). This plant wilts very quickly if it gets too dry or too hot.

Here’s a different view of my veggie garden. You can see a road behind it. I took the photo last Thursday, on the first day of lockdown. This is the main street in my suburb. It’s usually a lot busier than this. All my neighbours are home, their cars are in their driveways. No one is out on the street. Since then, the streets are busier. I don’t know if this is because I live near a park (where lots of people take their exercise) or because everyone wants to drive to the supermarket. Everyone is supposed to stay local and only leave their houses for essential business (which includes exercise). The Police Commissioner isn’t happy with the number of people in parks and on beaches. He’s warned us that the rules may change if we don’t stay at home.

Last week, as my world got smaller, I received lots of wonderful things.

I ordered these seeds a few weeks ago. They didn’t arrive. I emailed Koanga Gardens and Franzi got onto the problem right away. She discovered that NZ Post had lost the package. She sent me a new set of seeds. 3 days ago they arrived. Thanks Franzi.

It was my birthday 2 weeks ago. I bought some garden books online as a present to myself. They arrived last week. I’m surprised they made it to NZ when you consider what is happening in the world right now.

I celebrated my birthday in New Plymouth with my family and my son’s friend. We went to WOMAD. It was the last mass gathering in New Zealand. All the other mass gatherings that weekend were cancelled. We had 3 days of hot sun and good music and stunning scenery. It was pretty reckless. We drank wine, we danced and we sang badly. We washed our hands for 20 seconds, coughed into our elbows and hoped that would be enough to keep us safe. We tried to forget what was happening in Italy but we failed. Every time we popped back to our hotel room we watched BBC World News. The Italian doctors wore space suits, the sick people were encased in plastic capsules and everyone was rushing and shouting. It was bedlam. It wasn’t the Italy we remembered. The Italians on the news all said the same thing, ‘we should’ve listened to the warnings.’ And when asked what those warning were, they replied, ‘STAY AT HOME!’

The Blind Boys of Alabama, performing at WOMAD.

The city of New Plymouth is in the Taranaki region. There are lots of hedges in Taranaki. I’ve been thinking a lot about hedges. I really like them. It’s nice to see them being used in rural areas. I wish more places grew them. They have to be trimmed at least once a year and maybe this puts people off. I recently read about food hedges and would love to grow one if only I could figure out where to put it. In the meantime I’m growing a rose hedge. I planted it in winter last year.

I’m lucky I have an old friend who remembers me back when I had buck teeth. We rode bikes to and from school together. We’d save our cash and buy hot chips once a week on our way home. We climbed trees together and she was the first person I went mushrooming with. We were in the same horticulture class 2 years running and we both dreamed of working with plants. Her eldest and my only were born a few months apart. We haven’t lived in the same city since we were 29 but when we get together it’s like no time has past.

Two days before New Zealand went into lockdown my oldest friend’s birthday present arrived. It’s going to raise my spirits in the coming weeks. Books for a dreamer and a gardener.

I’m making fake flowers to pass the time. Every day I glue a new one on my fence. One for every day of lockdown. I hope I don’t run out of glue.

Fellow plant lovers and gardeners it’s time to dig for victory. Victory over sickness and fear, victory over physical isolation, and invisible foes. Dig for victory over xenophobia and meanness and leaderless leaders who care more for money than people (our own leader isn’t one of these - she’s a leader who leads). Let’s make gardens for animals, let’s make gardens for people, let’s make gardens to keep us in the here and now and give us hope for tomorrow. Stay home and grow plants.