From just a Parking Lot Edge to a Food Orchard: An Experiment in Regenerating Very Small Urban Spaces
When I look at these photographs now, I realise just how pivotal this little piece of land was in my own journey and, in many ways, in the journey that eventually became Harvesting for Good EA. It was never intended to be a grand demonstration garden. It was simply a neglected patch of space in the parking lot of the compound where I grew up, just outside our gate, and I kept wondering what we could do with it once I understood what productive landscapes look like. What could happen if we stopped seeing it as an awkward, unused piece of land and instead looked at it as an opportunity to experiment?
My relationship with permaculture had started several years earlier. I took my first permaculture course in 2011, and I was so new to it at the time, hadn't really touched soil or knew about agriculture, but I came away incredibly inspired and led for a complete career change. There were so many facets of the course that made me rethink the way I looked at spaces, food and systems. I was fascinated by the idea of a whole-systems approach and what that really meant within a permaculture context. It wasn't just about growing vegetables. It was about looking at the relationships and interconnectedness between soil, water, plants, people, climate and the wider ecosystem, and beginning to ask how we could design those relationships differently.
Between around 2011 and 2015, I started looking at our little parking-lot berm through that lens now post course especially. It was an idle piece of land that really wasn't doing much at all. The soil was incredibly hard and compacted, and very little seemed to grow there. What was particularly fascinating was that a few steps away, my neighbour's soil was completely different. We were in the same compound, in the same general environment, but this particular piece of ground had clearly been damaged over time. We would plant things and the seeds simply wouldn't come up properly. Plants struggled. It was almost as though the space had forgotten how to support life, being so exposed all of the years prior to this work.
So we had to rethink the approach. I was still fairly new to soil building so I put on my new permaculture lense on and considered every single thing I learned and continued to study. So rather than simply asking ourselves what plants we could put into the space, we had to start with the soil. That became the real experiment, for years to come.
We began creating a compost heap right there on the berm and started working towards building healthier soil. We planted nitrogen-fixing trees first, which now, when I look at them in present moment (2026), are absolutely enormous. We started introducing diverse ground covers as well. Some of those ground covers weren't necessarily going to give us the big sweet potatoes or the harvest that we might have initially imagined, but that wasn't really the point nor the goal. Their role was much bigger. Their roots were working into the soil, protecting the surface, adding organic matter and helping us rebuild the structure deeper down.
It took at least three years of soil preparation on our side a whole lot of patience, and that is probably one of the most important lessons this little space has taught me. We weren't just planting plants and waiting for a garden to appear. We were building soil life. We were trying to understand what was happening below the surface and create the conditions that would eventually allow the plants to thrive. That process takes time. It takes patience, observation and quite a lot of pivoting. Sometimes something worked, sometimes it didn't, and we had to change direction and it was OK.
This is something I often talk about when I use this garden as a primary example the most. People see the later photographs and see this incredibly abundant, biodiverse food orchard, but what they don't immediately see is how long it took to get there. The transformation wasn't an overnight success. We had to spend years working with that soil before we got to the point where we could really start seeing what the space was capable of.
Then the pandemic came, and that changed the pace of the experiment. Harvesting for Good EA had only been established in 2019, so by 2020 we were still very much at the beginning of our own journey as a start up. The pandemic gave us more time to spend in this space and to really rethink what we could do with it. We began reworking the area more intentionally, adding more nitrogen fixers, more ground covers and much more diversity. We started putting in permanent herbs and thinking about how to work with the slope rather than against it.
Water became a really important part of that thinking. We wanted to understand how we could get the water into the soil and keep it there rather than allowing it to simply run off as this was obviously a slope. How could we slow down and save water into the landscape? How could we create a space where the soil could hold moisture and the plants could support one another? We began creating microclimates and layering plants, thinking about how one plant could provide shade, another could protect the soil, another could attract pollinators and another could provide food.
And this is where the space really started to transform.
What had once been a very difficult piece of compacted red soil began becoming a diverse, living food orchard. We had fruit trees, herbs, vegetables, flowers and ground covers all working together. There was more shade, more life and more activity. The space became cooler and more sheltered, and you could see the beginnings of a completely different ecosystem developing within a very small footprint.
But for me, the most exciting part of that transformation was never really the plants. It was what had happened to the soil to allow all those plants to exist.
That distinction is fundamental to the way we now approach our work at Harvesting for Good EA. We aren't interested in simply going into a space, putting plants in the ground and calling it a garden and putting fancy fabrications on social media. The question for us is always much deeper, what is happening within that system, and what do we need to do to create the conditions for life to establish itself? How do we build soil? How do we work with water? How do we create diversity? How do we create the microclimates that allow a space to become more resilient and productive over time? Most of all, we are experienced in this with over a decade of actual site work.
This little garden became a living example of that philosophy for me and really for us. We had to build the foundations before we could really enjoy the abundance that came from them.
Something else happened during those years that I hadn't necessarily anticipated. The experiment started to ripple outwards. Neighbours began looking at their own little spaces differently. They started planting fruit trees and productive plants in areas that might otherwise have just remained empty or purely ornamental. Slowly, there were these little pockets of greenery appearing around the compound. It was really exciting to see because it wasn't about creating one perfect garden. It was about demonstrating that these small spaces could actually do something.
new high rise in the back (ugh)
And that feels even more important now when I look at how much the area around us has changed. When I was growing up here, there weren't nearly as many high-rise buildings. The landscape has become much more built up, and with that comes the question of where our green spaces are and what happens to all the water when it rains. Where does that water actually go? Where does it get absorbed? How much soil do we still have that can hold it? We've created so many hard surfaces in our cities that we often don't leave enough space for water to actually infiltrate into the ground.
I remember taking a photograph from a friend's balcony overlooking the compound where I grew up, and what struck me was that this was one of the few compounds in the surrounding area that still had so much greenery. From above you could really see the difference that these small pockets were making, especially all of our right hand side of the homes.
Over the last three years, though, this particular parking lot garden has been largely neglected. We've kept some of the fruit trees, and the nitrogen fixers have grown incredibly large. We have huge bananas, tree tomatoes and mulberry, and some of the ground covers have continued to do their work. But we haven't been maintaining it as the productive food orchard that it once was. Instead, we've allowed the space to breathe. We've heavily mulched it for the last two to three years and largely left the soil alone.
And now, when I look at it, the soil is telling us something.
That hard, compacted red soil that we started with is no longer there in the same way. There is a humus layer. There is organic matter. There is structure. There is life. You can actually see the difference in the soil itself, and for me that is incredibly exciting because it shows that the years of work weren't just about creating a beautiful garden above the ground. We were creating something underneath it that could continue to support life.
So now we're getting ready to start again.
We feel that the soil is ready for us to begin revamping and restoring the space back into a food orchard. But this time we are coming into it with years more experience. We know the space better. We know what worked and what didn't. We understand the slope, the water movement, the plants that established themselves well and the ones that didn't. We'll time the work with the rains and think carefully about how each stage complements the next.
And, importantly, we'll continue to learn from it.
For me, this is what makes the work so interesting. It's not simply about putting plants into the ground and watching them come up. It's about observing the activity within the system and understanding what is really working and what isn't. It is about being willing to make changes, adapt strategies and try something different, even within a very small space.
That is also why the permaculture principle of starting small and steady has stayed so important to the way we work. This little berm is a perfect example of it. We didn't start with a huge piece of land and try to transform everything at once. We started with one small, manageable space. We experimented, built our understanding and gradually increased what we were able to do as we became more confident.
I think there is a real gap here for gardeners, individuals and groups who want to start doing this work but perhaps don't know where to begin. Sometimes the idea of creating a regenerative garden can feel overwhelming because people think they have to transform everything immediately. But our own experience has shown us that you can take it a day at a time, build your capacity as you go, learn from the space you're working with and gradually expand once you understand what you're doing.
That is a big part of why this little parking-lot garden has remained so important to me and why it still features in our work at Harvesting for Good EA. It is one of our own long-running experiments. It has given us the opportunity to make mistakes, pivot, observe and learn, and it has helped shape the way we approach the spaces we now work in with clients and communities.
It also reminds us that regeneration is a process. It isn't about achieving a finished garden. It is about continually understanding and responding to the system around us.
When we talk about regenerative gardening at Harvesting for Good EA, this is the foundation we are coming from. We want to help people understand that the value isn't simply in what we plant today. It is in what we are able to build over time, healthier soil, better water retention, more biodiversity, more resilient plants, more productive spaces and eventually these little ecosystems that begin to function in their own way.
And I think this is particularly relevant to the cities we are living in now. We need to start looking at these little urban spaces differently. A parking edge doesn't necessarily have to remain just a parking edge. A boundary doesn't necessarily have to be ornamental. A small slope can potentially become a place where water is slowed and absorbed. A garden can provide food, habitat, shade and beauty at the same time.
We don't necessarily need more land to begin doing this. We need to rethink the land and spaces we already have.
This particular space started as a small, neglected patch of very hard soil. It took years to build it into a thriving food orchard, and then we deliberately allowed it to rest for another few years. Now we're ready to begin the next phase and see what we can create from the soil that has been rebuilt.
For us, it is another opportunity to start small, observe closely, keep learning and let the system tell us where to go next. And perhaps that is the most important thing this garden has given us: the confidence to know that even the smallest spaces can become something much more than we initially imagine, if we are prepared to give them the time, care and patience they need.
So, we're about to begin again with this little parking-lot food orchard. And I'm really excited to document the next stage, not just the planting, but everything that happens along the way.
Because the transformation is the story. And this one has been more than a decade in the making.
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