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Edible green space at home
Helianti Hilman and her food garden
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Helianti Hilman and her food garden.
Helianti Hilman's urban food garden is a lush sanctuary bursting with all the things that Mother Nature can offer.
Comprising of more than 80 varieties of fruit and vegetable crops as well as herb and spice plants, her garden takes up almost the entire front space of her two-story home and 120 square meters of community land located opposite.
'The garden is part of my mission to protect local food biodiversity and to eat healthily,' the co-founder and executive director of PT Kampung Kearifan Indonesia said in her home, located in Kebagusan residential area in South Jakarta.
'It's so easy to grow local crops and plants. They hardly need any special treatment.'
On the house's entrance lawn, popular local root spices ' including ginger, galangal and sand ginger ' are grown underneath a bamboo stand covered with passion fruit tree.
'These root spices don't need much sun exposure, so it's best to plant them in shaded areas,' said Helianti, who obtained many of her crops and seedlings from local farmers and farm shops across the country.
Nearby, there are pots of plants known for their medicinal properties and high nutrients, such as heartleaf maderavine madevin (locally known as binahong), which is believed to lower high blood pressure and cure acute gastritis, and purslane (krokot), a type of weed rich in omega 3.
'Weeds are usually overlooked because people think they have no health benefits while to the contrary, most are nutritious and have been dubbed as super food by many researchers from around the world,' explained Helianti who also grows other super food such as moringa oleifera (kelor).
'The moringa oleifera leaves contain higher protein than meat, higher calcium than milk, higher vitamin C than orange, higher vitamin A than carrot and higher potassium than banana.'
The front gate area is crowded with tall sour carambole trees surrounded by a pool of vegetable crops, such as corn, eggplant, long beans, Flores sword beans and few strands of rice paddies.
'The food garden also serves as a seed bank used for our own stock and other purposes, including bartering with fellow food gardeners. So I plant some exotic types of rice paddies, such as jasmine, to preserve rare seeds for future use.'
Attached to a wall outside the garage is an attractive large iron trellis plant display, which could hold up to 138 medium-size pots. Rare crops like black Papua chilies and Samosir beans are placed next to red spinach and spring onions.
On the second floor, the metal railings are filled with hanging pots displays and passion fruit trees, making the modern-style front facade glisten with fascinating greeneries.
Due to her interest in cooking, Helianti also collects various imported herbs and spices such as rucola, rosemary, basil, oregano, lemon balm and marjoram and tarragon ' all placed in shaded spots throughout the house's front porch. The seeds were purchased during her many vacations abroad.
'I'm growing these imported edible plants locally to reduce my carbon footprint and because it's much cheaper than buying them in supermarkets,' she says.
'These plants also serve as natural pest control,' she added, adding that she also grows imported vegetables, such as zucchinis and Lebanese cucumbers.
Right across the street, a green patch is brimming with shrubs of kale, spinach, bird's eye chilies, collards, moringa oleifera, blue-pea flowers, Flores ginseng and asparagus.
'Four years ago, this was arid idle community land,' Helianti says. 'Thankfully, the neighbors allowed me to transform it into a productive food garden complete with a medium size pond to breed freshwater fish.'
Anyone in the neighborhood can harvest crops from the garden or just hangout on the long wooden benches under the trees. They can even make garden compost using their own household organic waste in the composting site located at one of the garden's corner.
'Once every two or three months, we also hold a community garden lunch where each family brings their own homemade food, many use produce from the garden,' told the mother of one.
Helianti learned her habit of growing her own food from her mother.
'While we were living in a remote coffee plantation at the foot of Mount Ijen in Banyuwangi, East Java, my mother used to grow everything we needed in the backyard and bred our own chicken and fish,' she recalled.
When she and her husband moved into their current home in 2009, her mother came just to help her start the food garden.
'After much trial and error, we finally found the right gardening methods to suit the climate and soil conditions two years ago,' said Helianti, who at one time had managed to plant up to 150 varieties of crops.
For her garden, she conducted 'container' gardening strategy ' planting seeds using various containers, such as pots and polybags as well as reused materials like old juice cartons, plastic bottles, PVC pipes and dried fruit shells.
'No dig' plots ' in which she raised the soil beds by placing her own mixture of planting medium on top of the land ' were also made.
'Since the soil here is infertile, the containers are important for the crops,' she says.
'Moreover, we decided not to dig plots since the backfill land in the community garden contains a lot of big rocks that make it difficult for us to grow large crops and trees.'
For the planting medium, she mixes topsoil, organic compost, animal manure and mineral fertilizer together.
Unlike a typical well-arranged landscaped garden of ornamental plants, the food garden maintains its natural look and resembles a tropical rainforest.
In a bid to prevent pests, she avoids planting crops in neat rows and lets weeds grow naturally instead.
'I believe every plant grows naturally for a reason and that's what weeds are for ' as potent pest control.
A polyculture food garden, a garden with multiple plant diversity, is in fact more pest resistance.'
The beautiful greeneries are evidence that natural foods are actually
affordable and accessible to everybody.
'By having my own food garden, I can easily prepare healthy meals, snacks and beverages that suit my taste and the family,' she said, while serving deliciously crispy fried spinach, tasty rosella hot tea and thirst-quenching rosemary and mint ice tea, all freshly harvested from the garden.
'Better yet, I don't have to worry about what to cook anymore, especially when I want to make a family favorite dish such as Indian cuisine.'
She also said there is a greater sense of community, something being established with the presence of the food garden, allowing her to interact frequently with her neighbors.
'People come to the garden to prune and water the crops. Children play together and mingle with nature. It's so wonderful to be able to enjoy moments like these in a bustling city like Jakarta.'
'Photos by R. Berto Wedhatama
