An Italian market gardening family

It is 1949 on the banks of the River Torrens at Lockleys, and two young boys are milking a cow so their mother can make cheese and butter for the family. At 3 o’clock in the morning, their dad will take the horse and cart to the East End Market with their produce. Depending on the season this could be tomatoes, trombones, beetroots, beans, and onions.  

One of those boys, Giancarlo (Johnny) Marchioro has donated to the State Library a remarkable record of his family’s market gardening business, a business that ran for almost four decades and involved three generations.

Johnny Marchioro was born in Adelaide in 1940, the son of Italian migrants from the Veneto region in the north-east of Italy. His parents developed a market garden in Kidman Park, before moving in the late 1940s to the southern side of the River Torrens, in Lockleys. There they worked for three decades.

When Johnny left school, he worked with his parents at Lockleys and began keeping records of planting, picking, and selling vegetables at the market. Over a period of 38 years, he kept meticulous records of all aspects of the family market garden, including establishing new market gardens at Bolivar in 1965/6. 

Business record books provide a detailed and continuous record for years 1956 to 1994. Information about work, such as obtaining seed, sowing plants, picking and grading for sale to shopkeepers at the East End Market in Adelaide, is included.  

There is evidence of trends in demand and prices, and in the specialisation of growing tomatoes and vegetables over time. They show changes in the range of crops grown, market prices, and the operational costs and earnings involved in working a small, intensive family market garden.

The increase of large-scale businesses cultivating vegetables for the supermarket trade in the 1990s had a major impact on small family-owned market gardens and Johnny finished selling at the market around 2007.

Comfort, convenience, beauty

Australian garden suburbs were an offshoot of the British garden city design ideals developed by Ebenezer Howard in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His 1898 book To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, inspired urban planning across the world. His utopian community philosophy led to the 20th century garden city design movement. 

Howard aimed to build communities of 32,000 people. Each community would sit around a central, economically self-sufficient satellite town of around 58,000. This would mean an end to big city slums. It would blend the best of town and rural living by providing workers with decent housing within 9,000-acre communities of well-planned streets and gardens surrounded by a greenbelt. Public transport would provide short commutes to work, civic amenities, and entertainment.

From the 1900s countries across the globe had begun to adopt garden city ideals. However, these projects often diluted Howard’s designs to fit local financial and political conditions. One of the original ideals was to prevent urban sprawl by creating small independent cities with housing close to work and amenities. Instead, so-called garden suburbs were developed at the fringes of existing cities. This increased with the extension of public transport and the growth of car ownership. 

In South Australia, an early example of the garden city movement is Colonel Light Gardens, originally named Mitcham Garden Suburb. A plan was drawn up in 1917 by Charles Compton Reade, employed by the SA government as Australia’s first Government Town Planner. Local areas such as Broadview, Clearview, Springfield, and Crafers also incorporated elements of garden city design into their urban planning.

From early in the 20th century private developers had also used ‘garden suburb’ as a marketing tool. Rostrevor was an early example.

Reade’s original design closely followed garden city philosophy but adapted it to suit South Australian conditions. After World War One, Colonel Light Gardens became the site of the Thousand Homes Scheme, Australia’s first mass housing project, introduced in 1924. This modified the original concept but still provided a cohesive urban design and access to low-income housing. 

Bungalows were prevalent, with a driveway leading to a garage on one side. The front garden would have been a showcase of well-kept lawns interspersed with curved concrete paths, ornamental trees, and small flower beds. Standard roses were often a feature, surrounded by annuals like petunias.  

The back garden provided room for a veggie garden, clothesline, garden shed, wood heap, and perhaps a chook yard. Almost everyone grew a few fruit trees.

The importance of Colonel Light Gardens to early urban planning was recognised in 2000 when the suburb was designated a State Heritage Area.  

The Garden City and its influence on South Australian garden suburbs

Flower Day

Adelaide’s Flower Day can be traced back to 1936 when South Australia marked a century of British settlement with a series of statewide events including a floral pageant and National Flower Day (also called National Flower Week). There was great community input from volunteers who grew plants, decorated floats and constructed displays across the city, including a massive floral carpet.

The celebration of colour and beauty attracted thousands of spectators. It proved so popular that it was revived in 1938. The event was paused during World War Two but began again when the war ended. It was then held every 18 months, alternating between spring and autumn.

The streets of Adelaide, and later, some suburbs and country towns, were enhanced by thousands of fresh flowers, the brighter the better. Bulbs, shrubs, and perennials were welcome. Sunflowers, salvia, carnations, hydrangeas, gladioli, hollyhocks, nasturtiums, and dozens of other plants were arranged in sometimes surprising ways. 

Designs featured animals, landscapes, flags, clubs, schools, and regimental badges. Statues were draped in greenery and produce cascaded from barrels. Local businesses, charities, women’s groups, churches, volunteer organisations, and schools all contributed. Flower Day was a community-driven event. 

There were competitive and non-competitive sections. The competition entries were displayed in Victoria Square and non-competitive exhibits along North Terrace. The walls of Government house showcased as many as 60 large troughs of flowers. 

In 1955 the organising committee introduced a new event which added even more interest. A grand floral ball culminated in the crowning of the Floral Queen. Floats decorated with flowers carried the queen and her rivals along major streets.   

Years later the Flower Day committee gave their support to Adelaide’s new Festival of Arts, first held in 1960. Flower Day moved to March and became a much-loved part of the Festival of Arts’ opening celebrations. Until it was abruptly and controversially cancelled. 

In 1976 the Festival’s Artistic Director, Anthony Steel, announced to the media that Flower Day ‘had no artistic merit’ and no longer deserved a place in a Festival that aimed for international arts recognition. His statement that ‘the Festival is not for the people’ added insult to injury. While the artistic elite rejoiced, many South Australians read the announcement as unapologetic snobbery.

There may also have been a cost-cutting motive. Whatever the reason, its cancellation saddened those who loved the celebratory spirit of Adelaide’s sometimes quirky, but always delightful, Flower Day.  

Arbor Day

In the 1870s and 1880s trees were rapidly disappearing from the South Australian countryside as farmers cut them down to make way for wheat.

Agriculturalists, business owners and Adelaide’s gentry urged them to diversify with new crops like tobacco, flax, and sugar-beet. Newspapers, such as the Farmers’ Weekly Messenger and the Garden and the Field constantly suggested that grain farmers plant figs, mulberries, and olives to revegetate their land. Most refused. Regional homesteaders in this era did not usually have their own vegetable gardens. Fruit and vegetables were instead purchased from local hawkers or brought by train from Adelaide.  

Reliance on just one crop threatened the economy and even in the 19th century it was recognised that removing trees destroyed the land.

Prompted by Friedrich Krichauff, a member of the House of Assembly, Parliament acted. First, they paid farmers with land orders to plant trees. Then in 1875 they created the Forest Board to set up large forest reserves and tree nurseries. These provided thousands of free seedlings to farmers and landowners every year. The board appointed Mr John Ednie Brown as conservator of forests. He was passionate about the value of trees and believed that forests increased rainfall. Krichauff and Brown then established Arbor Day in South Australia, based on an overseas example. That first celebration of trees had been held in Nebraska in 1872 and then spread across the United States. 

South Australia’s first Arbor Day was held on 20 June 1889. Several thousand Adelaide school children and dignitaries met in Victoria Square. Led by police troopers and the Police Band, they marched to Victoria Park/Pakapakanthi.  There the governor, Lord Kintore, planted the first tree, a Weeping Scotch Elm. His wife, Lady Kintore, then planted a Bunya Bunya tree.

A single gunshot then rang out. It was fired by Albert Molyneux, editor of Garden and the Field magazine and secretary of the Arbor Day Committee. This was the signal for the planting squads of each school to begin. The pupils, distinguished by different coloured rosettes, planted 757 trees that day. 

Arbor Day became an annual event which spread from the city to the suburbs and country. It was a time to celebrate trees for their practical value, and as beautiful additions to places across South Australia.