Marie Walker provides sustainable, ethical and holistic garden management and care across the Bellarine Peninsula and Greater Geelong as the owner of Darling Pea Garden Care. She speaks with Jena Carr about what she loves most about living and working in Barwon Heads.
What is your connection to Barwon Heads?
I was born in Sydney, and in my early 20s, I moved to Melbourne – putting my voice to the age-old question of whether Melbourne is a better place to live.
I fell in love with a beautiful man in Melbourne and after a few years, we decided to start a family and wanted to buy a house.
There was no way we could have afforded to live in Melbourne, so we widened our search to include Geelong. We found ourselves in Geelong West before coming to Barwon Heads with our first daughter.
What do you like about where you live?
It’s hard not to feel the peaceful energy and joy when you can see the stars and hear the waves from your driveway.
I love the location, as being between the river and the ocean creates a special kind of magic, but it’s the community that I like most about living in Barwon Heads.
What, if anything, would you change about where you live?
I’d like it if there was a bit more ownership over dog poo. It’s not super fun to pick up, but when you get a dog, it is inevitable that they will poo.
Just pick it up and put it in the bin, but not the green bin, as you can’t put dog poo in the green bin.
Where is your favourite place to spend time?
I like my backyard oasis, and I love boosting my kids up the trees to get to the figs and apricots I can’t reach, but walking along the water and searching for treasure is my favourite.
The innocence and joy of being fully immersed in simple screen-free exploration just down the road from your house is bloody magical.
What is something people may not know about you?
I’ve lived many lives in my short life. I had problems with substance abuse early in life, but have been sober for many years now.
I am a nurse specialising in mental health and alcohol and other drugs (AOD). I do like to joke that I have been specialising in AOD and mental health for most of my life, just on different sides of the desk.
Horticultural therapy is something that I’m hugely passionate about, and there are great benefits to getting some dirt under your nails when your brain is feeling mediocre.
What do you like most about your role with Darling Pea Garden Care?
I have created this business with the guidelines of my morals and values in life, community, and the world while using a circular economy model.
I have been honoured to bring life to some beautiful gardens in Barwon Heads and the surrounding area with more soft landscaping and garden design.
The garden has always been a place of calm refuge for me and is a setting that quiets my busy mind. It gives my body a proper amount of functional movement that keeps me connected to myself.
I also really like the look my kids give me when the bathtub, or the ‘Plant Hospital’ as I like to call it, is full of plants on a hot day.
It’s important to me that my girls don’t see any task as inherently male or female but just as a human task.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
Darling Pea (Swainsona), sometimes called Poison Pea, is a native weed in Northwest New South Wales. It’s highly addictive and exceedingly toxic to livestock.
Livestock will start eating it and become uncontrollably addicted to eating it. They become very unwell quickly and look seriously drug-affected, ending in their death soon after.
Darling Pea Garden Care was named as a nod to the complexities of life and addiction.
