Olwyn Smiley has had a garden since she was five years old. Her first garden was on Koolan Island, which is off the Kimberley coast of Western Australia. There she grew mainly cactus and other succulents, plants that a child could manage on a rocky island with little top soil and no permanent water supply. 

Since then Olwyn has always had her hands in the dirt. She started her current garden in Heathmont 28 years ago. At first it had some “diseased plants and bird poo trees” but now it has around 30 fruit trees, thriving vegetable beds, vines and chooks. There is a potting area, a grey water system and winding paths. Both the back and front yards are heavily cultivated, as is the land beyond the property’s boundaries between the bike path and train tracks, where Olwyn and her husband have planted indigenous species.

As an enthusiastic amateur entomologist and passionate about all kinds of diversity, she pays close attention to the movements and behaviour of all the insect populations that have taken up residence at her place. The garden hosts blue-banded bees and the chequered cuckoo bees that lay their eggs in the holes made by the blue-banded bees. 

As The Backyard Vegetable, Olwyn helps people to establish their own veggie patches.