One of my earliest memories is the onions in the garden shed, their big brown beauty resting in mesh bag ‘shelves’ strung under the bench.
I bring a wealth of experience and training:
Mine was a nature-based childhood – gardening with my parents and siblings, hanging out with the chooks, looking for tadpoles in the dam overflow, picking and bottling fruit, all working together to grow and feed and learn. I was thrilled when, at seven, I was allowed my own garden, and took great joy in caring for it solo, even making my own stinky liquid fertiliser out of chicken poop.
The Incredible Edible Garden, Permaculture Education Institute
Introduction to Therapeutic Horticulture, Therapeutic Horticulture Australia
Associate Member, Therapeutic Horticulture Australia
Children in Permaculture, Learning in Nature
Introduction to Permaculture, Fair Harvest Permaculture, Margaret River
Permaculture Design Certificate and Permaculture Teaching Certificate, Morag Gamble’s Permaculture Education Institute
Certificate III in Early Childhood Education and Care
Certificate III in Horticulture (underway)
accredited Mother Nature Circle facilitator, Mother Nature Project, UK
Postpartum Education and Care Professional, Newborn Mothers
The passion for being in a garden was like chicken poop on your boot. It just followed me around, I couldn’t shake it off.
For a while I lived in the city (where I gardened in one rental after another) and I wrote about conservation and recreation in nature, and edited an environmental magazine. I retrained in early childhood, and worked in that field for a time, before growing my own babies and getting out of the big smoke. Those babies were raised in the garden and, as well as learning how to garden with a baby carrier and a toddler at my feet, I continued to study – first permaculture, and children in permaculture, and then to become a postpartum education and care professional, sometimes called a ‘postpartum doula’. These studies helped me explore growing food as a hope- and resilience-building activity, as well as created a passion for supporting for new mothers and their families during the profound transition to being a parent.
I felt lit up.
I also discovered the Mother Nature Project – an exploration of the journey of mothering, with a particular focus on how nature can support and ground us through the challenges and personal transformation mothering brings. Through the project, I trained in facilitating women’s circles. I also returned to a little work in the early childhood field – at a Steiner playgroup and kindergarten. And ideas kept percolating for my own livelihood that would bring all these passions together – supporting mothers, connecting with nature, building community and food resilience, engaging children in growing food…
I love what I do – supporting families to connect with their gardens and each other. Working alongside mothers as they work with their hands, as they pause to parent their children, supporting and facilitating with practical skills, tools, knowledge and care, and helping bring joy and pleasure to the experience – or at least reducing overwhelm through shouldering some of gardening’s mental load! We share knowledge, learn together, delight in and involve children, and grow food.
Most families I work with have a weekly or fortnight companion gardening session. How this looks varies from family to family, and from session to session – it’s an organic process and I adapt to your needs.
And so, in April 2025, my business Mother Nature Connection was born.
Nature grounds us. And our gardens are often our most easily accessible patch of nature in the busy-ness of life. I’d love you to get in touch, to invite me to visit your garden – or your empty space for which you have a dream – and let’s talk about how I can nurture you and your garden.
Joanna
Operating in Dunsborough and surrounds, south-west Western Australia – Wadandi country