What is a Flo Garden?

A Flo Garden looks like it has always been there…

Where there is water there is life

Rocks + Native Plants + Native Fish + Quality Pond Products

A Flo Garden is a natural ecosystem, replicating our local endemic creeks and streams.  A new home for endangered fish species and native plants who’s ecosystems are threatened by continual development.   

How does the water stay clean?  

A mechanical (skimmer) and biological (waterfall, natural healthy bacteria, fish, plants) filtration system. Water is constantly flowing/ being pumped through the system so that it is continually passing through the filtration system and over the falls - cleaning and aerating the water.  ‘Moving water’ benefits include: no mosquitoes, clean & clear water.  

A Flo Garden is fast to construct, cheap and easy to maintenance and chemical free. An inexpensive, almost instant way to transform your backyard into a thriving ecosystem. 

A Flo Garden supports life and reflects a healthy ecosystem.  

A Flo Garden natural pool is relatively inexpensive when compared to construction cost of other swimming pool designs. One major difference in our construction method is that Flo Gardens don’t use concrete in any of their builds. This cuts cost down dramatically in comparison to other pool companies that do. The use of concrete does not fit our ethos as not only is the manufacturing process resource heavy, concrete contains chemicals that leach into the ground and everything that enters the soil eventually end up in our waterways.

Flo Gardens are passionate about biodiversity and protection against habitat loss. We stock our natural pools, ponds and water features with species native to this region. Plants are an important part of the ecosystem and are not only functional (shade, food, habitat etc.) and aesthetically pleasing but are essential for the water purification/ filtration process in our Flo Gardens. 

Flo Gardens staff are highly qualified Horticulturists and Bush Regenerators (native plant and ecosystem experts) and plant selection and placement is one of our specialities. We select plants according to your region/ climate, soil type and how you intend to use the space. In addition to native plants, we also grow other species suitable for inclusion in your Flo Garden - medicinal plants, a wide variety of bromeliads, herbs and vegetables.  

We stock our natural pools, ponds and water features with endangered or threatened local fish species native to this region. Fish are am important part of the ecosystem and are not only aesthetically pleasing but are an essential part of the water purification process in our Flo Gardens. 

A pond is not just a pond

A pond is not just a pond.

Ever since I can remember, I have always loved ponds and waterfalls. They are like gazing into a fire, a glance is never satisfying. Ponds and waterfalls are timeless, ever changing, a form of meditation that is engrained and can never fulfil our animal instinct of living by them forever. 

Like fire, flowing water is the reason humans exists on this plant. 

Where there is water there is life.

My first real connection with ponds was in spring 3 years ago. 

My own pond is the result of years of trial and error. I have now created a pond I’m truly proud of. It’s far from perfect however after a couple of years it works well and grows spectacular fish and veggies.

If that was all that it did, that would be awesome.

The Spring of 2015 was particularly dry following on from a very dry winter. All the usual puddles and causeways were all bone dry, not a mozzie for months!

Everything was very quiet. It was the first rain for some months and I arrived home early one morning after a good night out and attempted to sleep.

But no, mother nature was not going to let me sleep! The sound was deafening.  RIBITS of all descriptions. As we had the only body of water for quite some way, every frog migrated to our backyard from what seemed to be from all over South Golden Beach!

There were hundreds of mating frogs on every surface in our backyard. There were so many different frogs that I had to move them to walk around the pond. They were only inches apart everywhere, even on every vertical surface! I have never seen this before and maybe never will again;

where all the stars aligned

and all the frogs so divine,

in all their glory, singing for what seemed just for me.

This memory keeps me going.

A pond is not just a pond, it is a source of life. I have made it my life’s challenge to create the perfect pond. One that has flowing oxygenated water throughout the whole body of water, replicating a bubbling creek. My years spent rehabilitating Riparian zones and chasing waterfalls has given me a life time of pond and waterfall designs ingrained into my imagination. 

A pond is not just a pond. It shouldn't just have a pump in the middle of it which is turned on and forgotten about, turning it into a boggy mess in a couple of years. We can grow all the veggies and seafood we need from our backyard pond. We can gaze into it for eternity with the comfort of knowing this perfect ecosystem is looking after us and everything that surrounds it, nourishing us all with the most nutritious food on the planet.

A new way to grow

There’s a food revolution going on – not just here in the sustainable heartland of Byron Bay – but right across Australia. We are re-thinking the way we eat, where our food comes from and the way its grown.

More than ever before, people are concerned with  eating clean, organic, locally sourced food.  Who wants to feed their families fruit and vegies that are full of harmful pesticides that have been lying around in a refrigerated warehouse for weeks, especially when you consider that large scale commercial crops waste precious resources and use chemicals to grow their food. It’s mind blowing to think that it takes 25,000 litres of water to grow a day’s food for a family of four - that's a crazy amount of resources, and with our growing population it's easy to see that it's not going to be sustainable for too much longer.

It’s time to take a more innovative approach to the way we eat, and the way we grow our food.... that’s where aquaponics comes in.

What we love about aquaponics is that it’s a completely self-sustainable ecosystem that works in perfect equilibrium with nature to produce beautiful, nourishing food - in the comfort of your own backyard. It only uses a fraction of the water that soil grown produce requires and the food it produces is nutrient rich and chemical free.

So, how does aquaponics work?

Essentially, aquaponics is a system for growing seafood and plants together. Plants grow directly in water, eliminating the need for soil. The waste from the fish (that’s a nice way of saying fish poo) gets turned into nutrients to feed the plants. Then the plants grow directly in the nutrient-rich water supply, giving you fast-growing, healthy vegetables, herbs and berries. Because they're growing in such a nutrient rich environment they grow up to three times faster than plants grown in soil. You would think that you'd need a lot of water to grow plants in a tank, right? Actually, it's quite the oppposite -  aquaponics uses up to 90% less water than soil- grown crops. All you need is sunshine and fish to produce your food – how amazing is that?

Our Aquaponics dream

Aquaponics is taking off around the world, and our dream here at Flogardens is to see Australians embrace this new and innovative way to grow their food.  We want everybody to be able  to enjoy this magical way  to grow food. You don’t need to be a handyman or have a green thumb.

Be a part of our food revolution

The future of food is almost here… If you want to grow fresh, healthy produce and seafood in your own backyard without needing soil, irrigation or a green thumb, please join us in our food revolution.

Living with a passionate man

Sounds amazing hey…like every girls dream. But what if the man you live with is passionate about his vision to change the world? “Oh ….” you say. When you read the title of this blog you thought "wow to live with a man whose passion and love for me overflows from him like a deep well of desire. That would be a dream come true"... right? Sorry guys that is not the case in my household. Add 3 little girls under 6 to the equation and passionate love goes on an extended holiday, loses its passport and decides to pitch its tent on the tropical island of your dreams. That sounds awful you say? Well to be honest, marriage with kids does look a little different to how I envisaged it as a dreamy teenager.

When I was single in my late twenties I was addicted to Tarot readings, Osho’s Zen tarot to be specific. Some mornings I’d ask the tarot whether to have porridge or a smoothie for brekkie. More often than not the card The Dream would pop up. The card’s full description is below if you relate, otherwise the basic jist of it is that no prince charming is going to come save us and make us happy. That job is all ours.

[Some enchanted evening you're going to meet your soul mate, the perfect person who will meet all your needs and fulfill all your dreams. Right? Wrong! This fantasy that songwriters and poets are so fond of perpetuating has its roots in memories of the womb, where we were so secure and "at one" with our mothers; it's no wonder we have hankered to return to that place all our lives. But, to put it quite brutally, it is a childish dream. And it's amazing we hang on to it so stubbornly in the face of reality. Nobody, whether it's your current mate or some dreamed-of partner in the future, has any obligation to deliver your happiness on a platter--nor could they even if they wanted to. Real love comes not from trying to solve our neediness by depending on another, but by developing our own inner richness and maturity. Then we have so much love to give that we naturally draw lovers towards us.]

So I guess it was foretold that I would meet a man whose passionate vision extended past my worldly charms. On an every day level living with a passionate man (like mine) looks a little like this. He gets up at 6am (its still dark at the moment). He gets the baby and throws her in bed with me so we can both squeeze a few more precious minutes of sleep out of the morning. He throws down some breakfast and is out the door not long after the big girls (5 and 6) get up and we emerge from our morning snooze snuggles. He spends the day running his Landscaping business. He comes home around 5/5:30 for dinner and to help get the girls wrangled into bed. Then just as I’m ready for a cosy couch snuggle and a shared episode of Game of Thrones, he announces he’s off to his workshop to keep working on his prototype. You see we tried the thing where he gave up his day job and spent a year pursuing his passion but sadly we nearly went broke. So now he squeezes it in at night and on weekends.

Even though he is exhausted he pushes on because he has a vision and a dream that is so close he can almost touch it. I’ll be honest, more often that not when he heads off and I’m left alone on the couch again after child-wrangling all day. I’m pissed off and I’m feeling kind of rejected. Where is my prince charming and why can’t he just have a normal day job?

Lucky for me I have my own passion. So sometimes I get off the couch and start choreographing a new dance or listening to inspiring music. I give thanks for these moments of time when I can focus on what makes me happy and how I can use it to help other people find their happiness. But also to remember who I am outside of this crazy motherhood ride.

Which brings me back to Osho Zen Tarot and the other card that seems to pop up for me – Friendliness.

[The branches of these two flowering trees are intertwined, and their fallen petals blend together on the ground in their beautiful colors. It is as if heaven and earth are bridged by love. But they stand individually, each rooted in the soil in their own connection with the earth. In this way they represent the essence of true friends, mature, easy with each other, natural. There is no urgency about their connection, no neediness, no desire to change the other into something else. This card indicates a readiness to enter this quality of friendliness. In the passage, you may notice that you are no longer interested in all kinds of dramas and romances that other people are engaged in. It is not a loss. It is the birth of a higher, more loving quality born of the fullness of experience. It is the birth of a love that is truly unconditional, without expectations or demands.]

So there we are, my passionate man and me standing strong in our roots but allowing our branches and leaves to mingle and intertwine in our friendship. I’m helping him now two days a week with his business and planning a crowd funding campaign for later in the year and to be honest, I can’t count the amount of times he’s pressed play on my iPod at my gigs.

So speaking of passion, there I was just the other day in a marketing meeting and someone asked him to tell his story. Although I have heard it a million times, on this day it finally sunk it. The next level of his vision was revealed to me. It’s about restoring the natural order of things bringing ecosystems back into our lives and specifically into our backyards. He said when we repopulate our gardens with natives and food gardens the animals come back (all sorts of species of birds, insects and lizards). Aquaponics is an easy way to do this because it is in itself an ecosystem.

He also said that children have an innate sense about their environment and providing them with this reconnection is how he sees we will change the world. In the way we think, eat and act towards one another. I can see it in my kids, who are all completely different; when they are in the garden they are connected to all of it, the plants, animals, insects, each other and us. Hearing Adam speak about his dream I think I fell in love with him just a little bit more and if he pulls this off, it might just make all those nights home alone worth it.

How I got my introverted child to shine

The First Child

I think its true what they say about the first-born child…they receive so much of your undivided attention. Sometimes this attention manifests in weird and wonderful ways. Of course I see this only in hindsight. Our number three often just gets thrown food when she squawks at us and has developed a strong sense of self and security already from such an early age.

Priya, our oldest daughter (now 6) is super shy and introverted. Her preschool teacher described her to me once. I was expressing some concern about her lack of social skills and so she explained her personality like this 'she is cultivating such a rich inner world that she actually has little concern for what’s going on around her and outside of her'.

So when I mentioned to her about the upcoming talent search for ABC’s Dirt Girl series I was totally surprised that she was keen. We talked about what it would entail and suggested she make her video about aquaponics. Her response was ‘But I don’t know anything about aquaponics’…so not true. Then she remembered that last year she had written a mini essay about aquaponics and set about trying to find it.

Facing fear

She couldn’t find it and that’s when she decided she was too scared to do it. Its moments like this that I hesitate. What is the right thing to do? I was brought up in a culture and age where we push through our fears, feelings and energy levels. To a point where I know so many people who have suffered from adrenal burn out. So at what point do we decided to trust our intuition and say no to things that don’t support us?

Facing this internal dilemma, I tried to find the balance. We talked about the possibility that if we are afraid to do something its like a window of opportunity opens and if we just jump through it, anything is possible. I explained that I often feel nervous before a big show but I use the nerves to fuel my performance and that there is a big difference between that type of nervous fear and the scared feeling you get when you are in a dangerous situation. This is the type of fear we don’t ignore.

I tried to explain to her that it might take a lifetime of practise to tune into which type of fear she was experiencing but never the less, keep trusting and strengthening her intuition. She decided after the pep talk she would give it a try and see how it went.

Aquaponics girl

In absolute amazement I watched my shy and introverted girl come out of her shell. In front of the camera she blossomed. She even explained some things about aquaponics that I didn’t even know. Of course I had to cut most of it out cause its was supposed to be a 30 sec clip. I’m so proud of her. She was absolutely buzzing with excitement when we finished and told me I was right about jumping through the window of fear!

So here she is my little Aquaponics Girl!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNPKOJ7bZxc

5 reasons to love Flo Gardens

Create an instant vegie garden in your backyard with a Flogardens Aquaponics system.

So what is Aquaponics, anyway?

Good question. Even though it’s been used for centuries by traditional cultures around the world, the concept of growing vegies using only fish, water and the sun is still a fairly new concept for most Australians.

Aquaponics is a system that includes a fish tank and a grow bed.

All you need to is feed the fish, the fish create poo, and the poo feeds your vegies. It’s that simple!

5 reasons we love Flogardens

1. You don’t need a green thumb

The plants grow directly in water, so there’s no need to worry about soil quality, weather conditions, compost, fertilizers or weeds. All you need to do is plug it in, feed your fish and they’ll do the rest of the work for you

1. Grow beautiful, healthy fruit and vegies without the effort

Herbs, greens, strawberries, tomatoes, celery, eggplants all grow beautifully with our Flogardens aquaponics system. Imagine serving up delicious meals every day made with vegies from your own backyard.

1. It uses 90% less water than a normal veggie garden

Save the planet while you feed your family!

1. Fruit and vegies grow 3 times faster than a normal vegetable garden

Because your food is growing in a perfect ecosystem with nutrients produced by your fish, your vegies grow faster, stronger and healthier than a regular vegie patch.

1. You can even eat the fish!

Serve up beautiful, sustainable seafood that you’ve harvested yourself in your Flogardens aquaponics system.

Growing food for his family: An ode to a husband and visionary

This morning I rocked up to my Mums and Bubs exercise class with a bucket full of fresh lettuces to share. All excess from our garden. In the car on the way, my girls (4 & 5) were munching on lettuce leaves and talking about which part of the lettuce they love best. My heart swelled with pride for my kids and gratitude for my husband who grows food for his family.  

I grew up in the 80s when fast food was at its peak. My parents had successful retail stores and worked 7 days a week. Cooking and healthy food was low on their agenda. Convenience was high. We ate out most nights, often from nice restaurants but also often enough, from fast food chains. On the weekend someone told me we parent how we wish we were parented, so I guess this morning I had a ‘high five me’ moment with the lettuce discussion in the car.

I was vegetarian for many years in my 20s and eventually started eating a bit of seafood. I was always a little concerned about the amount of heavy metals in the seafood I was eating. Then after my naturopath told me she was treating a family who owned a seafood store for mercury poisoning I really began to question the fish I was eating.

Pregnant with bubba number 2, Adam started digging a massive hole in our backyard telling me he was going to raise fish out there. I sighed and secretly thought to myself couldn’t we just have a lawn like most suburban families. The hole looked to me like somewhere to bury our ever-dwindling income.

Fast-forward 4 years and our garden is a thriving ecosystem which my kids are completely part of. We have 2 large grow beds thriving with veggies. We have a constant source of sustainable seafood and a garden full of budding fruit trees. I am so grateful that he has a long-term vision for our family and for the planet.

When I was single I was very health conscious and would either buy produce from our growers markets or our local organic shops Now, as a mother of 3 with a limited budget, we would not be able to eat so well if it was not for our garden.

Adam has dedicated himself to the pursuit of Aquaponics. Not only that, he has a vision that every family can easily grow their own food. Everything he does, he has our family in mind. During his process he was pretty happy with the volume and quality of food his aquaponics systems were producing but the time spent maintaining them was eating into his precious and scarce family time.

Our girls love feeding the fish, picking the veggies and helping me prepare the food. I love that they are so involved in this process. I know that many roads lead to Rome and Aquaponics is not the only way to produce food in your backyard. But from what I can see and have experienced, it’s pretty bloody awesome and most importantly, easy.

I am not a green thumb, nor a visionary. I am a lover of the moment and of truth, of people and dance. I usually just see what is in front of me. I take everything literally. When Adam picks me a lettuce for dinner, I see a lettuce. What he is actually giving me is his devotion and love. I am looking for it everywhere else, but there it is in a simple lettuce.

Being married with 3 kids under 5, trying to grow a business and following our dreams and passions is not necessarily conducive to peace and harmony. Nor love and respect at times. It’s a roller coaster ride this marriage thing, a constant dance. We are complete opposites, my husband and I. It’s easy to focus on the difference as a negative thing. So I’m grateful for moments like this morning, in the car, with the lettuce, to remind me how great he is.

So I am shouting out to the world that my husband is awesome! My kids are so lucky that their Dad cares about their health, their beings and the planet and not just in principle. He is out there everyday (and I mean everyday) with his hands in the soil (or water) creating, building, dreaming, visioning, inventing and striving for our family… and essentially for yours. You can check out his dreams at www.flogardens.com.au

A big hole

After buying our first house in South Golden Beach and with our first child looming, I spent a lot of time thinking about my perfect backyard. The property is a standard 600m2 block with the backyard facing north. I've always wanted a big spectactular pond in my backyard. There was a stand of bananas right off centre in our backyard. There was an old concrete septic tank between the bananas and the back of the house. I pictured the septic tank as a pond leading to the stand of bananas as an island with water around it.

As our family expanded as did our house. We extended it out over the septic tank. My dream of the spectular pond was diminishing. A month after our extension was finished we had a little disaster during a big storm. A tree fell into our new bathroom. We had to replace the bath tub. The builder suggested I use it as a pond. So I did. I used the tub as the top pond below the waterfall then cascading into the main pond.

I began to dig. It wasn't soft fluffy soil, but compacted fill and rock and clay. After chipping away for a week or so it was dug. About 3m3. It was the spectacular pond i was after. After googling the ideal pond depths and aeration I came accross a youtube video. Using an areator, a guy was able to push water up a tube out of a drum full of fish and into troughs where veggies were growing, then flow back into the drum. I had a eureka moment. This is what I was to do with my pond and back yard.

After mastering aquaponics I finally worked out my perfect backyard. Combine the ecosystems of aquaponics and bush regeneration as well as fruit trees! Now my kids are aware of where there fruit and veggies come from. They love being a part of it!

The beginning

I've always wanted to be able to have a superb veggie patch to feed my self, and later on my family. A garden where my kids could one day experience what I did. A lot of people have had this dream. I grew up in Dulwich Hill in the inner suburbs of sydney. My grandparents were amazing people. Surviving WW2 and escaping Poland, they made their way to Ashfield, where my parents met. I spent a lot of my childhood at my mum's parents place. Their backyard is my inspiration. It was an average size yard. The left side of the yard all along the fence line was a large veggie patch. In the back left corner and along the right side were fruit trees.

I spent a lot of time preparing food and helping my grandmother cooking. These memories will never leave me. The smells and the smiles. The pleasure and pride my grand mother would put into every meal. This is how I remember my early childhood and amazingly she is still smiling at 93.

I gained a very close personal relationship with veggies and and plants in general thanks to my grandmother. I ran a garden maintenance business straight out of high school. I worked with tropical plants. I still wasn't satisfied. I did 12 years of bush regeneration, still not satified. It still wasn't what I really wanted to do....

I've alway wanted to create that perfect backyard. It constanly evolved in my head.

Stepping stones

After Doing a day course at Byron bay community college, I got a good understanding of aquaponics. It was run by Ian Campbell from Aqualife Industries. His experience in aquaponics was also enhanced up with his relationship with fisheries and their research. The ratios we were given of fish to grow space and all the fundamentals I took away from the course and used it to design my own systems. I did research on the net for months, looking into the best way to make filters, bell siphons, the different fish to use, other seafood to grow ect. I choose to go down this path as after my research and going to check out aquaponic systems I realized two things. What an amazingly simple way to grow veggies, no weeding, limited maintenance (a lot less than a veggie patch) and you can get fish and seafood as well. However as incredible a system as they are, they are extremely unattractive.

My goal was set. To make aquponic systems that are pleasing to the eye, hiding all pipes, all evidence that it is an aquaponics system. I designed an aquaponic system at Billinudgel in front of the hardware. This system was designed around current medium sized garden aqauponic system with three grow beds and a 1500L tank. It had a small footprint. The system including the grow beds were all pre fabricated out of aluminium and lined with plywood and clad with decking and colourbond. Durable, iight and ergonomic. The difference with this system to what is currently available on the market is its appearance. It looked quite spectacular. However there was one downfall, its price. My goal is to get a system into everyone’s backyard. I needed to make it a lot cheaper.

After six months of looking after this system and the other systems I’d built and purchased. I realized one thing. As incredible as they were, they took too long to clean and required to drain a fare amount of water to clean the grow beds every couple of month. There had to be a better way…….