E 1: Mark Colvin Gardening for Mental Health in Lockdown

Mark Colvin, DJ and Owner of Our House Productions and Music Programming Manager for The Pushworth Group.

I pre empted the lockdown. I had a bit of an inkling that what was going to happen was going to happen. So I  took a few steps early on to sort of go, alright, well, if that’s got to be the case and we’re going to be Lockdown for a while. For me the Garden was a real chance to have something that I could delve a lot of time into and sort of keep the brain thinking so much about this situation that we’re in and that has helped and has really, really, really helped a lot. But it was very early, probably very early March.

I learned a lot about building process. I learned about everything. I learned on the fly. I learned to companion plant and protect from possums and insects. It is always evolving, always developing.

It has been pretty tumultuous sort of six months. I needed something to really focus on. Whether it be vegetables or succulents or flowers, it’s a living thing. You have got to tend to it, make sure that it’s happy in a bit that it’s feelings are in check if you know what I mean. So, you know, if you don’t water it, you don’t fertilize it. You’re not going to get the crops. You are not going to get the flowers I’m so there’s a lot of similarity, I think just in between life in general and in growing things.

The whole growth process has been important for me. Planning ahead – big lessons for me.  My understanding about planning ahead, starting with the seedlings and then before it takes them out into the garden correlates to business especially change management. I learned about planting in the right season. I learned about failure. I learned how to evolve and learn on the fly. Compost, Nutrients, Worm Juice, recycle and reuse and how to return all clippings and kitchen scraps back into the garden creating a self feeding ecosystem.

It kind of helps you to really think about the food that you’re buying and cooking and its almost like it’s great analogy for life and for business. Cause you’re really thinking about how everything feeds into everything else. There is a lot of other things going on with a background. If you don’t have the Polliniser and the bees in the yard, nothing’s going to work. We needed to get beneficial bugs into the ecosystem.

The garden gave me purpose. It kept me busy. I fed the super creative and organizational mind of mine. Its not perfect but neither is life. Full sun, less wind, different positions, different watering needs – so much to learn about.