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Hannah Molonley, the effervescent Gardening Australia presenter, has always had her hands in the dirt: growing up in inner-city Brisbane, she helped out in her dad\u2019s urban herb nursery. Her mum, meanwhile, worked as a research librarian at the Native Title Tribunal, and by default, Moloney says, she absorbed a strong sense of social and environmental justice.<\/p>\n
As well as her TV gig on the long-running ABC series, Moloney works as a permaculture designer and educator, and a climate activist. But she\u2019s never didactic; you can\u2019t imagine her ever lecturing someone about anything, even if they were actually doing it incorrectly, or pushing her ideology onto anyone.<\/p>\n
Perhaps that\u2019s why she had so many responses to a survey she sent out seeking answers from everyday Australians about why they garden. Many of us grow our own food when we could simply walk to the supermarket, or cultivate a garden when we could visit a local park. Moloney has been pondering the \u201cwhy\u201d of these things for decades.<\/p>\n
For her new book, Why We Garden, her third after Good Life Growing in 2023 and 2021\u2019s The Good Life, she asked people what it is that draws them to gardening. She also spoke to friends, neighbours and the odd well-known Australian.<\/p>\n
\u201cThrough my work with Gardening Australia, I see a lot of gardeners, and hundreds of gardens every year, and it\u2019s \u2026 incredible the degree we go to, to have a garden,\u201d she says over Zoom from her home in Tasmania.<\/p>\n
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Hannah Moloney\u2019s bright-pink Hobart home. Natalie Mendham<\/p>\n
In 2013, Moloney, her partner, Anton, and their daughter, Frida Maria, moved to a .4-hectare property just outside Hobart. Tasmanians (and Gardening Australia fans) will likely know it \u2013 it\u2019s the bright-pink house perched on a steep hillside that they have converted to a thriving mini farm, with edible forest gardens, vegetable gardens, an orchard and a clutch of ducks, chickens and goats. They\u2019ve used every scrap of space to grow or nurture everything from bees to vegetables and flowers that they share with the local community.<\/p>\n
But as Moloney discovered in her research for the book, just as much pleasure can be derived from even the smallest of spaces. \u201cWhether it\u2019s a balcony or a backyard or a paddock, we put so much time, energy and resources, all of it,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Moloney is inside her pink house when we talk, a philodendron tendril trailing down behind her, although she professes to be not so great with indoor plants. \u201cBut inside, outside, whatever it might be, plants are beneficial,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
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Moloney in her Hobart garden.Natalie Mendham<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is something else for me in having contact with the original soil and being outside. I think there\u2019s an extra something special there \u2013 but indoor gardens are also beautiful and can be absolutely beneficial. I\u2019d never want people to think, \u2018oh, it\u2019s not worthwhile because I haven\u2019t got an actual patch of earth\u2019 \u2013 it\u2019s always worthwhile. The science behind the benefits has been around for decades, but I don\u2019t think it\u2019s very \u2026 valued, like a range of things in our culture.\u201d<\/p>\n
She\u2019d like to see this kind of science embedded into education systems, as a way to help people \u201clive well in the world\u201d.<\/p>\n
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Leveraging her \u201cpretty chunky\u201d social media following, Moloney began canvassing people a couple of years ago. \u201cI also talked to a few dozen people face-to-face: friends, colleagues and some well-known Australians, just asking why they make the time to garden. I wanted some of the more unlikely gardeners as well. Some of those are pretty obvious, but others are like, oh OK, I didn\u2019t know that person gardens,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Why We Garden blends philosophy, environmentalism and Indigenous and agricultural history, among which are sprinkled her survey responses from 1500 people.<\/p>\n
The book is divided into the reasons for gardening \u2013 among them, \u201cfor our minds\u201d, \u201cfor our bodies\u201d, \u201cto connect with nature\u201d and \u201cto build community\u201d \u2013 but by far the most popular response on Moloney\u2019s multiple-choice questionnaire was \u201cfor joy\u201d. A whopping 94.6 per cent of people gave this answer, as Moloney says in the book, \u201ca big fat tick\u201d.<\/p>\n
Other respondents told her they had started pottering to work their way through grief; some found connection through community gardens, and others began growing food to save money.<\/p>\n
TAKE 7: THE ANSWERS, ACCORDING TO HANNAH MOLONEYWorst habit? Leaving and losing garden tools all over our large garden!Greatest fear? That my daughter dies before I do.The line that stayed with you? \u201cNever doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it\u2019s the only thing that ever has.\u201d \u2013\u00a0 Margaret Mead.Biggest regret? Seeing property on the west coast of Tasmania advertised for $5000 in 2001 and not buying it.Favourite book? Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney. My mum gave this to me as a teenager when I was having a tough time, just a couple of short years before she died \u2013\u00a0 it is deeply treasured.The artwork\/song you wish was yours? Any painting by Gwenneth Ngilingili Blitner, an incredible Bornanang-Warmutjan artist \u2013\u00a0 I covet her work.If you could time travel, where would you choose to go? I\u2019d go back to when they were making the internet and make them put in some kind of magic, permanent infrastructure so it could only be used for doing good.<\/p>\n
Author Tim Winton talks about gardening as an old instinct, a \u201cbody memory of being broke and anxious\u201d, while musician Clare Bowditch says she draws from the lessons and creativity a garden can give us. She tells Moloney that \u201cyou only have to make the smallest effort and the creativity of nature will meet you halfway there and then some. That it doesn\u2019t abandon you, that it\u2019s ever present, that it\u2019s often sitting there waiting to be enjoyed and made use of and again back to that generosity\u201d.<\/p>\n
Journalist Laura Tingle explains how she finds gardening can focus her mind: \u201cIn your darkest moments, it\u2019s so absorbing. You\u2019re drawn into all this stuff that\u2019s happening around you all the time while you\u2019re not even watching.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moloney\u2019s life has always revolved around gardening, both personally and professionally, and while she finds it an act of resistance (she sees it as a form of solution-based activism), a way to grow her own food, and to connect with culture and history, she\u2019s an enthusiastic advocate for the benefits of digging in the soil for mental health.<\/p>\n
She writes candidly that before Why We Garden was fully under way, she found herself in the \u201cdark and boring hole that is self-doubt\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI bloody hate that hole, but I find myself there now and then,\u201d she writes. \u201cThe ongoing voice I have in my brain is that I\u2019m worthless and nothing I do could possibly be of use to the world, so why even bother. I was on the verge of canning the whole thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
As well as drawing on the voice of her younger self, \u201cLittle Hannah\u201d, Moloney talks about how time in her garden helps, \u201cdigging something, planting something, mulching something, lying on the ground and breathing in the earth and patting goats \u2013 \u200breminds me that I am the least and most interesting thing in this ecosystem of life we live in\u201d.<\/p>\n
The book includes research and data about how important access to green space can be. \u201cBeing outside, doing a thing, is proven to be wildly useful, and that\u2019s why I\u2019ve shared stories about how it\u2019s helped me with some tricky situations and chronic health issues,\u201d she says. \u201cIt cannot be underestimated. It\u2019s not going to solve everything and make everything rosy and hunky-dory, but it can make things a little better. Ok, I still don\u2019t feel great, but I\u2019m a little better. It\u2019s why so many GPs are increasingly telling people they need time in nature.\u201d<\/p>\n
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