Gardener Profile

LIVING A SIMPLE, HAPPY AND HEALTHY LIFE One couple’s quest to live more simply and sustainably is inspiring many others along the way. Words and Images by Tess Holderness Living ‘lightly’ has allowed a young Brisbane couple to keep their expenses to a minimum and quality of life to a maximum. Roman Spur and his partner, Jana Cejnarova, have mastered the art of sustainable living and are happy to share the ideas and inspiration behind their DIY lifestyle. Roman and Jana’s story demonstrates that it is possible to lead a more selfsufficient lifestyle and create a highly productive food garden in a small backyard, even in a rental property. While living in inner city New Farm, 5 minutes from Brisbane’s CBD, they grew much of their own fresh organic food, and spent less than $50 a week on groceries. Roman’s solar hot water conversion and construction of an outdoor cob oven (and a solar oven out of an old satellite dish) helped to reduce their use of green power electricity to approximately $100 a quarter (around 25% of the average Australian household’s consumption). This young migrant couple embodies the possibility of living happy, healthy and fulfilling lives, without sacrificing comfort or convenience. Originally from the Czech Republic, they first arrived in Australia, in 2008, and fell in love with this country. They had been working in the UK when Roman, who has a PhD in civil engineering, received an Australian job offer to work as a sustainable building design engineer. “After spending a couple of months travelling around, exploring this vast and beautiful continent, we settled in Brisbane,” Roman explains. “We were

Roman and Jana with little Lada – feeding the chickens on their friends’ farm.

so impressed with the weather, climate and lifestyle, and the fact that you can grow things all year round, unlike in Europe. It’s wonderful! And we feel very lucky to be here.” Roman settled into his new role, designing energy and resource efficient buildings, and the couple decided to make this new country their home. They joined local gardening clubs and learnt how to adapt to the new climate and growing conditions.

Feathered friends. (Photo Credit: Jana Cejnarova)

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Gardener Profile

year old Lada, to grow up with similar opportunities, and to benefit from a healthy lifestyle, with fresh, flavoursome home grown food. As parents, they also consider the type of environment that they want to leave for their daughter and for future generations. This is one of the many motivations for sharing their learnings and experiences – and Roman’s innovative and cost effective inventions – to assist and empower others to embark upon their own journeys of growing food and living more sustainably. Roman and Jana are advocates for how rewarding such a lifestyle can be. In fact, they don’t just walk the talk, they live it – with genuine passion and an optimism that is uplifting and contagious. “We feel really positive about the future and the sustainable changes that are being made in society,” says Roman. “It is a very exciting time of change and the demand for this sort of knowledge and information is certainly growing.”

Taste testing with Daddy.

An Urban Farm

Jana and Lada in the garden.

Roman checks on plant growth in the shade-house.

When Roman and Jana moved into their small New Farm unit, it was one of a block of five, with a shared concrete courtyard and a bare patch of lawn at the back. In the 6 years that they lived there, they literally transformed the space from a concrete jungle into a lush, productive inner city oasis – an urban farm – for all of the tenants to enjoy.

A Learning Journey Roman and Jana both grew up in the Czech Republic, living quite a sustainable lifestyle. “Living in a communist country, it was second nature for people to grow their own food and not waste valuable resources,” Jana explains. “Children would often learn about gardening, recycling, repairing things and being resourceful from their parents and grandparents, just like we did.” Gardening is something that this duo continues to enjoy today. They are keen for their own daughter, two

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Roman and Jana travelled around Australia before settling in Brisbane.

(Photo Credit: Jana Cejnarova)

Helping to maintain a productive garden on a friend’s farm.

They planted climbers along the fencelines, with food plants that could be shared with their neighbours. The back lawn was gradually replaced with fruit trees, mainly in pots, and vegetable beds with compost-enriched soil – all producing an abundance of fresh food within a fairly small space. And on the concrete, a terraced collection of Roman’s innovative, self-watering styrofoam planter boxes started to appear. A lovely sense of community evolved, through gardening and connecting with neighbours and the sharing of the excess harvest. The outdoor and solar ovens were put to good use, creating dishes – like pizzas, bread and cakes – for friends and neighbours to enjoy. “Jana, who is a wonderful cook, started teaching others traditional skills like how to make preserves, sauerkraut, kombucha and home-made yoghurt,” says Roman. The couple also introduced chickens, honeybees and worm farms, enabling them to produce home-made compost and fertilisers, fresh eggs and honey, in addition to a diverse range of fruits, vegetables and herbs.

Tumeric roots, ready for harvesting.

Paw paw – compliments of the Queensland climate.

A mulberry cutting starts to flower.

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Gardener Profile ‘Before’ – a blank canvas at New Farm. (Photo Credit: Jana Cejnarova)

Roman enjoys doing presentations on gardening and sustainable living. “Whenever we looked out at the garden, we’d feel a wonderful sense of creation and achievement,” says Jana. “There was so much abundance and things started to become self-seeding and self-sustaining after a while. The garden was largely able to look after itself, supported with nutrient-rich compost and watering from greywater and harvested rainwater, using a simple, gravity fed system. We produced the

Styrofoam Wicking Beds Roman came up with a simple, innovative design for creating miniature ‘wicking beds’ out of recycled materials. The idea is to convert the humble white styrofoam vegie box into a portable, self-watering planter box – saving on water and providing a cost effective solution for growing herbs and vegetables in containers. The white styrofoam serves to insulate and protect the soil and plants, especially from the hot summer sun and reflective heat from concrete and hard surfaces. Whereas black plastic pots tend to heat up and dry out fairly quickly. Some (50 mm) PVC pipe and potting mix are all you need to complete the design, and with

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majority of our family’s food ourselves and preserved and shared the excess with others.” The success of their low-tech little ‘backyard farm’, which they called ‘Spurtopia’, created a lot of local interest, and the couple started to host open days and workshops on food gardening and sustainable living. They also created a blog to share their experiences … and requests for

some basic assembly, you will be ready for planting. The styrofoam lid, with some aeration holes, is used as a barrier between the soil and water, with three soil-filled sections of PVC pipe serving as the ‘wicks’ – allowing water to travel upwards via capillary action, from the water reservoir below, to the growing plant roots above. A longer section of the PVC pipe is used to fill up the water reserve periodically, and contains a small styrofoam ‘float’ on a stick to indicate the water level below. For full instructions and photos visit: spurtopia.blogspot.com. au/2014/04/spurtopias-inventionself-watering.html

presentations at schools, community groups, councils and various events started to increase. Presenting and talking to interested members of the public is something that Roman and Jana really enjoy. In fact, when the company Roman was working for closed its Brisbane office, he opted not to relocate or return to full time work, preferring instead to do part time sustainable design consultancy work and to focus on sustainability education, which he sees as quite transformative. “Our low cost lifestyle was able to facilitate this change of direction, enabling me to spend more time with my family and also share my passion for gardening and sustainable living with others,” he explains.

Baby Lada in the pumpkin patch. (Photo Credit: Jana Cejnarova)

‘After’ several years – the flourishing New Farm garden. (Photo Credit: Jana Cejnarova)

A cake from the solar oven. (Photo Credit: Jana Cejnarova)

An Open Garden presentation at the New Farm rental property. (Photo Credit: Jana Cejnarova)

From little things big things grow. (Photo Credit: Jana Cejnarova)

Wicking Pots A New Chapter

This young family recently moved out of their New Farm unit, which is being demolished to make way for a new development. They are currently living with friends on an acreage, further out of Brisbane, happily in exchange for helping to sustainably convert a working shed into a guesthouse and create a more productive garden. They are really enjoying the country lifestyle and seeing Lada playing in and exploring a more extensive garden space. They are however, looking for their own house to buy and have plans to create ‘Spurtopia Mark II’. Living simply has enabled them to save the money

to purchase their own home. So a new chapter is about to unfold … and the sustainability presentations and blog posts are set to continue. This lovely couple is doing what they love and loving what they do. “Life is beautiful!” says Roman. “I always say to people, do whatever excites you the most, whatever you get the most joy out of. Follow that dream, that passion. Be inspired and create your own utopia.” For more information on Spurtopia, sustainable living and gardening workshops, or Roman’s innovative designs, visit: spurtopia.blogspot.com.au

A clever little self-watering pot for strawberries, seedlings or herbs. With the lid removed, a plastic milk carton is cut in half, with the top half fitting snugly inside the bottom. A piece of ‘Chux’ dishcloth placed into the bottle neck serves as a ‘wick’, once the soil and plant are placed on top. After watering, a pool of water drains into the bottom of the container and is slowly drawn back up into the soil through the ‘wick’, keeping the plant hydrated.

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