The rise of the inner-city farmer in Sydney, Australia

Indira Naidoo embarks on a mission to transform her tiny thirteen-floor balcony into a bountiful kitchen garden. Penguin Books Australia, 31/10/2011, Paperback, 224 pages.

The Edible Balcony charts a year in the life of Indira’s balcony garden and gives a season-by-season account of the triumphs and challenges she faces.

Roslyn Grundy
Sydney Morning Herald
November 14, 2011

Excerpt:

Naidoo’s balcony vegie patch was an idea that could easily have withered on the vine. “A lot of people in apartments just automatically rule themselves out,” says Naidoo. “They just think, ‘Well, there’s nothing I can grow in an apartment so I won’t even think about it. I’ll fantasise about one day having a tree change or a sea change and having my little plot of land somewhere, but it’s not going to happen while I live in the city.’”

One of 261 people former US vice-president Al Gore trained in 2009 to educate the public on climate change, Naidoo is involved in communicating complex scientific and political concepts relating to climate change, carbon trading and consumer food miles.

Growing a few tomatoes on her 13th-storey balcony seemed like a simple way to reduce her own carbon footprint and put a little oxygen back into the atmosphere while waiting for politicians to agree on a carbon trading scheme. And how hard could it be? A hundred years ago, everyone grew and cooked their own food, she reasoned. The reality was both simpler and more complex than she imagined.

Read the complete article here.

Penguin Book website here.