Longview Garlic is a small farm in the Southern Tablelands of NSW, Australia, run by Lee and Phil Towle. Most days you’ll find us knee-deep in garlic or the kitchen garden, tending to our small flock of merino sheep, or ever-so-slowly building our minimalist, off-grid house.

We grow high-quality, nutritionally-dense and flavourful culinary garlic, which is available to purchase here as green garlic, cured garlic, and dried garlic. We also encourage folk to grow their own garlic, and share our knowledge and experience through our seasonal guide. We follow organic growing and regenerative agricultural practices, and do all we can to ensure any packaging is either biodegradable, recyclable or re-usable. 

The beginnings

Longview Garlic started because, like most folk, we had an idea in our heads of the type of life we wanted to live but as we tried to implement parts of it, we found the only way that was going to happen was if we did it ourselves. We wanted to eat organically grown, locally sourced seasonal food, and were really frustrated that we could not find garlic that fit these criteria.

The garlic bulbs you typically find at the large supermarkets are industrially produced, large and imported. To make the long journey the bulb is sprayed to stop it sprouting, it is fumigated (with an ozone depleting chemical) to pass quarantine, and then shipped around Australia to the shelves in the supermarkets and put in cold storage. The bulb you see is not fresh, is grown for size not taste, is chemically treated and fumigated, has travelled a long way and stored in less than prime conditions.

What makes our garlic different?

Longview Garlic is grown for taste, with different garlic varieties to match different cultural dishes. We do everything by hand, and at a human scale to ensure a high quality product. Longview Garlic is sold the season it is harvested, making it a much fresher and tastier product than any imported garlic.  We also produce green garlic, a seasonal delicacy we hope to bring to customers all year round because of its versatility and high nutritional value.  We grow our garlic organically and pesticide free using innovative agricultural practices to regenerate the land. 

Currently we are a micro producer of garlic and we want to increase output in a way that ensures the human scale of production is maintained. So instead of investing in more heavy farm equipment to till fragile soils, we are increasing our planting density by using wicking beds. This growing intensity method is very water efficient, helps drought-proof our business, and is working to protect and rehabilitate our soils.