Cheryl Dingle has a 25-acre property outside Maldon with five of those acres turned over to an extraordinary permaculture garden.
She grows potatoes in car tyres, tomatoes in ever rising beds, 17 varieties of figs, avocadoes, macadamias and ginger. You find tomatillos, tamarillos, and Cape Gooseberries in a quietly mouldering car body on the property. The car, by the way, is lined with plastic, and it makes an excellent hothouse. In winter she winds the windows up on the seedlings inside and the winter sun heats up through the glass. As spring draws on she gradually unwinds the windows, until the doors are flung wide open at the height of summer.
Her kitchen garden is outside the back door, where she grows all kinds of useful things: tomatoes, orach, coriander, parsley, edible weeds like fat hen and stinging nettle. Every single garden bed on the property is sealed in plastic, but because of all the recent rain they have become waterlogged. She’s pretty cheerful about that, though, as it doesn’t seem to be a problem.
Dingle grows enough food to feed her family and to sell excess at Talbot Farmers Market once a month.