Your Perth Garden This Winter
A seasonal guide to growing food, building resilience and enjoying your garden
By Alison Gilchrist, CEO, GFS Perth
One of the wonderful things about gardening is that every season offers a fresh opportunity to begin again.
While many people think of winter as a quiet time in the garden, here in Perth it’s actually one of the busiest and most rewarding times for growing food. Cooler temperatures, regular rainfall and fewer extreme heat days create ideal conditions for a wide range of delicious vegetables and herbs.
At GFS Perth’s Friendship Central, we’re passionate about helping people discover that growing food doesn’t have to be complicated. Whether you have a large backyard, a few raised beds or simply a collection of pots on a balcony, winter is a fantastic time to get planting.
What can you plant now?
If you’re wondering what to plant in your Perth garden during winter, there is plenty to choose from.
Now is a great time to plant:
- Globe and Jerusalem artichokes
- Asparagus
- Beetroot
- Broad beans
- Broccoli
- Cabbage
- Celery
- Celeriac
- Coriander
- Endive
- English spinach
- Kale
- Kohl rabi
- Lettuce
- Mint
- Onions
- Parsley
- Peas
- Potatoes
- Radish
- Rhubarb
- Silverbeet
- Snow peas
- Spring onions
- Strawberries
- Turnips
More Than a Gardening Method
Many of these crops thrive in Perth’s winter conditions and provide fresh, nutritious produce over the coming months.
Am I too late?
This is one of the questions we hear most often. The answer is… probably not!
If you haven’t planted all your winter vegetables from seed yet, you’re certainly getting towards the end of the ideal sowing window. However, don’t let that stop you. Succession planting, adding small batches of crops every few weeks, is an excellent way to extend your harvest and avoid having everything ready at once.
You can still successfully sow crops such as:
- carrots
- beetroot
- peas
- many leafy greens
These will help keep your vegetable patch productive well into spring.
A simple shortcut
If you’ve been thinking about growing broccoli or cauliflower but haven’t started yet, don’t worry. Rather than sowing seed now, consider buying healthy seedlings from your local nursery. You’ll often save four to six weeks of growing time and be harvesting much sooner.
Another handy tip is to choose dwarf or compact varieties where they’re available. Smaller varieties generally mature more quickly because they don’t need to spend as much energy producing large plants before forming edible heads.
Sometimes working with nature is simply about choosing the right variety at the right time.
Growing more than vegetables
One of the things we love about permaculture is that it reminds us every garden is doing far more than producing food. A vegetable patch can become a place where children learn patience, neighbours swap seedlings, families spend time together and conversations happen naturally over a wheelbarrow or watering can.
Gardening strengthens more than soil. It strengthens confidence, skills, resilience, health and often, friendships too. That’s one of the reasons Friendship Central has placed food growing at the heart of what we’re creating. Every bed, fruit tree and herb garden is designed not simply to produce food, but to create opportunities for people to learn together, volunteer together and enjoy the simple satisfaction of harvesting something they’ve helped grow.
Why not try something new this winter?
If you’ve never grown your own food before, start small.
- A pot of parsley
- A few snow peas
- Some lettuce in a raised bed
Perhaps a punnet of strawberries for the grandchildren. You’ll be amazed how quickly confidence grows alongside your vegetables. As the old gardening saying goes: The best time to plant was yesterday. The second-best time is today.
Why not make this the winter you discover the joy of growing your own food?
Growing Together at Friendship Central
At
Friendship Central, GFS Perth is creating a living demonstration of permaculture in Perth, where people can learn practical food-growing skills, discover sustainable gardening techniques and experience how growing together can also help build stronger, healthier and more connected communities.
Whether you’re an experienced gardener or planting your very first seedling, we’d love to welcome you on the journey.
“It’s amazing how a little tomorrow can make up for a whole lot of yesterday.”
John Guare.
Want to follow the journey?
Visit us — Come and see Friendship Central taking shape.
Join us — Volunteer, become a member, or join our Makers community.
Partner with us — Become a Founding Partner and help build something that lasts.
