What’s it all about?

“Ligaya” is a few things. The name means ‘happiness’ in Tagalog (the national language of the Philippines… That’s where Jelina and Marlon are from), it’s special kind of happiness that comes from being connected to family and community.

Ligaya Garden was first established here in Gawler South, on Kaurna Country, in 2015 with a single strawbale bed in the back yard and has grown and flowed and evolved into the exciting mess that is is now. The garden has been grown to give us a measure of independence by slashing our bills, greatly reducing our ecological footprint as a family and as a way to give back to our community. We don’t believe in sustainability at all! Rather, we look beyond that in most things that we do, looking to a point where every aspect of the garden can produce more that we put in. If folks settle for sustainability, we won’t get very far.

This site is a little different to many, everything we cover on it is from our own experience of trying, succeeding or failing. It’s not a repository of cold information – everything is tinted with our personal take on things or the experiences of folks who we have learned to love and trust. You won’t get any posts with titles like ‘5 ways to move a garden gnome’ or ’10 ways to split your pants gardening’. Personally, I avoid anything online that starts with a number.

This website was designed to give free and accessible information to encourage and inspire folks to try different things in the field of gardening and suburban farming. It is aimed to be as much journal and lifestyle website as it is a technical one.

We hope that adding the warmth of personal experience to the information we include will make exploring this website a happy, inspirational experience. Maybe one you will keep coming back to as everything develops.

We’re not experts on anything, but you can follow us as we learn on our blog or our various social media links. Our social media accounts are a record of the daily development of our lifestyle, house and garden as we journey through sustainability and into surplus.

As much as we can, we try to get our efforts out into the community, to establish friendships and partnerships with like minded folk. So check out our friends and connections too on our community page.

To protect the Intellectual Property of folks who contribute, we place most of this blog in the Creative Commons under BY NC and  SA Attribution conditions. So you can share most of it, just don’t do it for profit or change the conditions. The bits that can’t be shared are clearly marked.

If you’d like to help out a little with a small donation, here’s where you can. Don’t forget to follow this website and our social media accounts so that you can keep up to date on the goings on. Join our email list too so that you can be directly notified of things and receive Athena’s monthly woofletter.

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