Our Team
Garden Care is a small team of three. We live in three very different parts of Australia — a market garden in the Adelaide Hills, a one-and-a-half acre block outside Bendigo, and a 60 sqm courtyard in inner-west Sydney — which means between us we have soil that goes from cracking clay to sandy loam to half a metre of imported potting mix in pots. Every recommendation on the site comes from one of us using the gear in our own garden, or from us pulling apart the alternatives until we know why one is the right pick.
Harriet Greenfield
“Real food does not happen in a hurry.”
Harriet runs the edible-bed and soil coverage for Garden Care. She and her partner Tom (a primary school teacher) live in the Adelaide Hills, on a 1,200 sqm market garden Harriet took over from her parents fifteen years ago. The block sits in a frost pocket about fifty minutes east of the city, with a cool-temperate climate that is brutal on tomatoes in October and gentle on brassicas in July. Harriet grew up walking the rows with her father — a third-generation grower — and likes to say she learned to weed before she learned to read. These days she runs the kitchen garden almost single-handedly, sells excess at the local farmers' market each Saturday, and writes for us on weekday mornings before the heat hits the polytunnel.
She has strong opinions about hot composting (yes), no-dig (mostly yes), and the marketing copy on commercial seedling tags (no). Her current obsession is heritage tomato seed saving — she has a freezer drawer of envelopes labelled in her father's handwriting going back to the 1970s. She gardens with a kelpie cross called Wattle and two laying hens, Phyllis and Rita. If she is not in the garden, she is probably reading Eliot Coleman or arguing with the Diggers Club newsletter.
- Lives: Adelaide Hills, South Australia
- Covers: Edible beds, soil, hand tools, kitchen gardens
- Loves: Heirloom tomato seed saving, hot composting, hand-forged tools, hard frosts done well
- At home with: Wattle (kelpie cross), Phyllis and Rita (chickens)
Writes about: soil microbiology · kitchen gardening · heirloom seed saving · hot composting · cool-temperate vegetable growing · hand-forged garden tools · farmers' market production · chooks
Read Harriet’s articles →
Marcus Linden
“Buy once, garden often.”
Marcus covers power tools, lawns, and the hose-and-water side of Garden Care. He lives outside Bendigo on a one-and-a-half acre block, half kitchen garden and half native paddock that he is slowly bringing back from blackberry. Marcus spent twelve years working as a landscaper before he tore his shoulder lifting a flagstone in 2019 and pivoted to writing. He still does occasional consulting for clients he likes — gates, retaining walls, big drip systems for olive groves. He is the divorced father of two teenage sons (Henry, who is finishing a diesel mechanic apprenticeship, and Owen, who wants to be a vet and has fish in every spare jar in the kitchen).
Marcus knows two-stroke engines the way some people know songs, can resurface a chainsaw chain in his sleep, and is currently rebuilding a 1986 Victa lawnmower that he insists is better than anything new. He writes in the shed in the mornings and walks the boundary fence with his two border collies, Ginger and Skink, every afternoon. On weekends he plays bass in a covers band that mostly does eighties Australian rock; the band is, in his words, 'two pubs above terrible.' He drinks his coffee black and his beer cold and has firm opinions about tyre pressure on garden carts.
- Lives: Bendigo region, central Victoria
- Covers: Power tools, lawns, hose gear, water systems
- Loves: Two-stroke engines, restoring old tools, splitting firewood, eighties Australian rock
- At home with: Ginger and Skink (border collies)
Writes about: lawn mowers · chainsaw maintenance · petrol versus battery · drip irrigation · landscaping · two-stroke engines · hose and tap fittings · firewood cutting · olive groves
Read Marcus’s articles →
Rosa Calloway
“Small spaces, big harvests.”
Rosa keeps the indoor-plant and small-space coverage at Garden Care. She lives in Marrickville, in Sydney's inner west, in a two-bedroom worker's cottage with a 60 sqm courtyard garden that she has cultivated obsessively for the last six years. The courtyard is north-facing, gets four hours of summer sun and almost none in winter, and currently houses four citrus pots, a wall of potted herbs, two figs, an espaliered pear, and a hand-built vertical strawberry tower made by her partner Adi. Rosa worked as a graphic designer for eight years before a balcony herb-garden Instagram experiment went viral in 2020 and she pivoted to writing. She still designs the occasional book cover when the deadlines line up.
She is married to Adi (a ceramicist whose pots fill the courtyard and most of the kitchen) and has a rescue cat called Pesto who has personally shredded several seedling trays. Rosa is the one to ask about getting twenty plants into a balcony without it looking like a botanical hoarder, choosing pots that will actually last a decade outdoors, and which indoor plants forgive a forgetful waterer. Her current side project is a salad-greens microbed under a grow light in the laundry — at last count it was producing more salad leaves than she and Adi can reasonably eat.
- Lives: Marrickville, inner-west Sydney
- Covers: Containers, indoor plants, courtyards, balcony gardens
- Loves: Container design, second-hand pots, citrus in pots, indoor edibles, espalier
- At home with: Pesto (rescue cat)
Writes about: container gardening · indoor plants · balcony gardens · courtyard design · grow lights · hydroponics for edibles · espalier · inner-city soil · small-space irrigation · self-watering pots
Read Rosa’s articles →