Millie Ross is a professional green thumb. As the co-host of Gardening Australia, she dispenses handy advice on matters such as starting your own veggie bed, picking the best seedlings and DIY-ing a back yard berry patch. Ross has decades of experience in the garden. Before she stepped on screen with the ABC, she worked in garden centres, taught horticulture at Tafe and penned The Thrifty Gardener, a practical guide to building the garden you want with whatever you’ve got. She even worked as a researcher and writer on Gardening Australia before becoming a presenter. Unsurprisingly, the greenery whiz relies on her tools – all 50-odd of them. Here, Ross tells us about the one she can’t do without, as well as the story of two other important personal belongings. What I’d save from my house in a fire I’d grab some little pastel sketch books that belonged to my dad when he was a kid – I think he was about 13 or 14. I had never seen them before I was packing some of my parents’ things to move house, and instantly loved them. In his teenage drawings I can so clearly see him as a man; his angular handwriting and the things he remained interested in throughout his life. Planes, good dogs, boats: he was such a talented technical drawer. Dad grew up in a tiny town on the Atherton Tablelands. He wasn’t university-educated but he landed a job on a survey boat in the 60s, which led to a life in commercial fisheries. He could park a 54-foot yacht with broken steering better than the family station wagon. But in his own time, he was always tinkering, ticking things over in his mind, sketching and trying to solve problems. For years he was working on a prototype for a perpetual engine – in the spare bathtub! I also love to sketch to find solutions, whether it’s designing a garden space, fixing up my old house, or making custom tools and furniture. I recognise part of myself in Dad’s drawings. One which helps me quieten my own busy mind. My most useful object I love tools – I could list about 50 here. I make lots of tools myself: my converted barbecue potting bench genuinely changed my life, and if you haven’t renovated a clapped-out wheelbarrow you haven’t lived! But I reach for my secateurs every single day, and I find myself searching for them when they’re not on my hip. I’ve had my favourite pair for over 25 years and worked them to pieces multiple times, bashing pegs into the ground, cutting wire, all the things you shouldn’t do. I’ve had the handle recoated once before and after a short (and I’m assured accidental) roasting in an outdoor fire pit, they’re on their way back to Dave, the secateur whisperer, to be fixed. Recently, a local cobbler also refurbished my old leather holster too, adding a solid leather loop and flash copper rivets. I’m pretty sure I’ll get another decade out of the renovated setup, maybe a couple. If I don’t accidentally put them through the mulcher, that is. The item I most regret losing As a gardener you get used to losing things. I’ve lost count of the hundreds of plants I just had to have, and grow, that I can’t even remember killing. It’s one of the true joys of being interested in plants: there are always more to explore, and every mistake you make is learning – and compost. Occasionally I see something that I used to grow and feel regret, but for the most part I just enjoy being transported to that moment in my life. Whether it’s a reminder of a past landscape or person, I am grateful for those little markers on the path. When it comes to things, I’m more of a breaker than a loser. I’m always moving fast and doing too much, which can leave a little trail of destruction. I’m (mostly) OK breaking my own things, but breaking something special to someone else is the worst of feelings. Some years ago, familiar with my whirlwind, my dear housemate put her precious ceramic fish plate high out of my reach – or so she thought. I’m so sorry Embles; that moment we both watched it soar through the air and smash into oblivion was a heart-stopper. I know it doesn’t make up for it, but there’s a fish pie in the oven for you always.