Bookworm: Planting for native birds, bees and butterflies

In our interview series Bookworm, we chat with authors and artists about books, gardening and food. This month, we meet Jaclyn Crupi, a respected author, editor and bookseller.  

Gardening runs in author Jaclyn Crupi’s blood. For as long as she can remember, she’s been side-by-side with her two nonni, planting seedlings and pulling out weeds. 

“I remember being in a nappy, and crawling around on the soil in the vegetables,” she says. 

Her paternal nonno grew food year-round, transforming every available patch of land into a thriving kitchen garden. “You stepped out of the house, and you were in the garden,” she recalls. Then, summer holidays were spent among her other nonno’s tomatoes, cucumbers and beans. 

That knowledge inspired both her beloved book Garden Like a Nonno and the way she tends to her own productive patch today on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula. 

In her kitchen garden 

In a move that would make her nonni proud, Jaclyn transformed an old tennis court into a flourishing garden, filling it with vegetables that are hard to find or costly to buy. Think organic garlic, and Italian brassicas like spigariello, cime de rapa and romanesco. 

And she swears by the taste of home-grown carrots: “The purple dragon carrot is probably my favourite; it's purple on the outside and orange inside. And I love the Paris Market carrot as well, which is a small stumpy carrot that's very delicious."  

Carrots from the garden often find their way into a carrot curry (Alice Zaslavsky’s gajar makhani), while the summer glut of tomatoes and capsicums is preserved in sauces for pasta and soup. 

“I like to cook very vegetable-forward food. I'm always looking for recipes where the vegetable is the main ingredient,” she explains. 

Beetroot curry is on heavy rotation, and so is pasta, like cavatelli, her current favourite, as it’s so easy to make.  

Her book Pasta Love is a much-loved resource among Kitchen Garden Program members. 

Wendouree Primary School students making a recipe from Pasta Love / Credit: Wendouree Primary School

When the garden becomes a home 

Already growing more food than she needs, Jaclyn started to ask herself, “Who else can I feed? Who else can I provide a home for?”  

So, she turned the rest of her land into a habitat garden. 

On the very first day of planting native plants and flowers, she spotted a blue-tongued lizard, a blue-banded bee and a spotted pardalote. “This wildlife is all around us, and we just need to give them a reason to come to our garden. They're not going to visit your garden if there's nothing in there for them to eat, drink or seek protection,” she says. “It was so miraculous that I started telling everybody. And I wrote a book about it.” 

Jaclyn Crupi in her garden. Credit: Armelle Habib

Planting for Native Birds, Bees and Butterflies 

Like much of her work, her latest book, Planting for Native Birds, Bees and Butterflies, is already winning hearts across generations. 

The illustrated guide to creating a garden that attracts Australian wildlife is practical and accessible. “One thing I'm good at is taking really complicated information and simplifying it and still ensuring it's correct, and talking about it in a way anyone can understand,” says the author.  

Jaclyn’s three tips for a garden brimming with life 

1. Just plant something. “Go to a nursery, find some plants that you like. Hopefully they're native, but there's a real place for exotic plants in a habitat garden in Australia as well,” says Crupi, noting that salvias are a favourite for their resilience. 

2. Let your garden be wild. “Stop tidying up your garden, removing all the leaf litter and removing fallen sticks and rocks. That's all habitat,” says Jaclyn. “It will bring in slugs and snails, and who eats those? A lot of native birds.”  

3. Embrace organic gardening. "If we all stopped using chemicals, it would do wonders for our native wildlife, especially frogs and lizards and skinks,” she says. 

Her connection to the Foundation 

Nat Paull, Jaclyn Crupi and Stephanie Alexander at an International Woman’s Day event in Barwon Heads earlier this year. Credit: Glen Barry

Jaclyn has interviewed Stephanie Alexander several times, and Stephanie herself has praised Jaclyn’s books. But the author has another, more personal connection to the Foundation: her nephews attended the very first Kitchen Garden Program school in Collingwood. 

"They were so tiny at the time and, they were so proud of everything that they grew. They were so much more likely to eat the vegetables that they grew as opposed to just being served some vegetables,” recalls Jaclyn. “And I remember them coming to my garden and they could tell me what everything was, and they would harvest some things, and we would cook together. It was a lovely time.” 

• Inspired to create your own buzzing garden? Look up Planting for Native Birds, Bees and Butterflies, and register for our free Create a native pollinator garden webinar with Heartscapes’ Emma Cutting. 
• Kitchen Garden members have access to exclusive resources on bees, beneficial insects in the kitchen garden, and the power of pollinators. They can also find a beetroot curry recipe on the Shared Table.
• And read our previous Bookworm interview with author and artist Tai Snaith here.

Header photo of Jaclyn Crupi by Armelle Habib