Imagine strolling the rows of a fruit orchard or lettuce farm while children clamber over haystacks in an agricultural haven just metres from the heart of the bustling Adelaide CBD.

By Alice Monfries
Sunday Mail
January 07, 2012

Excerpt:

Converting our western parklands, skirting West Tce, into a 50ha “city farm” is one of the innovative ideas being raised by urban experts and the community for the future of inner Adelaide as part of the 5000+ project.

Run by the Adelaide City Council and State Government, 5000+ calls on city residents, shoppers and workers to submit ideas to help shape a long-term vision for the greater CBD.

“Farming the City”, or bringing sustainable agriculture, rooftop crops and hanging vertical gardens into the CBD and inner suburbs, has emerged as a key theme among the 1000 ideas already uploaded to social media sites.

A range of uses for the 50ha city farm – mocked up during 5000+ forums to generate debate – includes wheat crops, citrus orchards or huge lettuce gardens, a recreational wetland designed to trap stormwater and increase the flow of the Torrens, and a “playscape” or wild, natural landscape for children to play in on the outskirts of the CBD.

Read the complete article here.

See the ‘City Farming’ 5000+ blog here.

Health messages include healthy eating, the importance of physical exercise and the dangers of smoking

By Adam Dwyer
Senior Project Officer – Primary Health Services
GP Plus Health Care Centre Marion

Description of the project:

The clients were involved in the planning of the building, through engagement with the landscape architect commissioned to design the roof garden. The building was designed to include the roof garden due to the success of a previous community health engagement/food garden development with these clients. The community engagement is based around healthy lifestyle choices (food, physical activity, stress/mental health, quit smoking/substance abuse), promoting access to free health services, empowerment and social inclusion. Actively growing food brings a lot of these together.

The building (GP Plus Health Care Centre – Marion) contains and integrates previous separately located health services into one location (inc. Primary health, mental health, dental service, child and adolescent health services, youth services, sexual health, pathology). The roof garden is predominantly used actively by people living in Supported Residential Facilities (SRFs) but benefits all health staff (with whom it is quite popular) and community and will be opened in future for use by other client groups (such as indigenous youth groups, who will grow bush tucker on the roof). We also have compost and worm farms for staff to capture and cycle green waste from the building (3 levels, ~200 staff).

Currently we’ve got watermelon, rockmelon, tomatoes, eggplant, pumpkin, garlic, kale, rocket, herbs, corn, blueberries, peaches, pear, apple, goji, rhubarb and more as well as a living wall of strawberry bushes. Many of the seeds of these were collected from the old garden and scattered into the roof garden soil – the style is a wild food garden/ecology where all niches and seasons are filled with edible or ‘useful’ plants. We use no artificial fertilisers or pesticides in the garden (we use our permaculture-ish principles and home grown roof worm juice for this!). Clients and health service staff are involved in all stages of the development from planning the garden to harvesting and eating the produce (yum). We’ve also got sunflowers, marigold, calendula and poppies in the open areas and extensive living walls of indigenous plants and some non-indigenous plants (ie strawberries).

See City Limits article, Dec 2011, here.

See Info Sheet about the roof here.

Eighteen diverse kitchen gardens, from subtropical Queensland to the arid zone of central Australia, from the suburbs of Adelaide to the countryside of rural Victoria and Tasmania.

By Kate Herd
Penguin Books Australia,
28/02/2011
Hardback, 232 pages

Excerpt:

Twenty years ago my stepfather was horrified when my mother planted corn in our ‘nice’ and ‘respectable’ front garden in the Melbourne suburb of Kew. For him it was embarrassing; it smacked of urban peasantry: ‘What will the neighbours think?’ Thankfully, vegie gardens are again a more accepted part of the urban landscape. Groovy inner-city cafes boast their own potagers and there are monthly neighbourhood vegetable ‘swap-meets’ where fresh unused or excess backyard produce is swapped for the different surplus of others. The busy city family doesn’t even need to get its hands dirty to benefit from its own garden any more – you can pay companies to install and maintain your vegetable garden for you.

On the other hand there are gardening makeovers based on reciprocal volunteerism like those instigated by the organisation Permablitz, where volunteers will come over and transform your garden into a productive space in a single weekend.

Digging up the front lawn for a productive garden might still constitute an anti-social act of radical gardening in some suburbs, and should by all means be encouraged! For those without land or an appropriate space of their own, a plot in a community garden or a land-sharing arrangement of some kind can be the answer. I love that a contemporary kitchen garden might be created on some unused urban land appropriated by a guerrilla gardener somewhere in a street near me; a ‘vegieplante’ who risks a council notice or two to make a low-tech and affordable edible garden out of recycled materials like pallets or car tyres. The country or rural kitchen garden is a different matter; regional gardens being marked by their access to open space and to large quantities of resources like manure and straw and, often, by their isolation. These days, however, country and city produce gardens can be equally challenged by lack of water.

Penguin Book website here.

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.

The Australian Community Gardening Movement And Repertoires For Change

By Claire Nettle
Bachelor of Environmental Studies Master of Applied Science (Social Ecology)
Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
School of History and Politics, University of Adelaide, December 2010
359 pages

Abstract:

There has been a resurgence of community gardening activity in Australia over the past decade. This coincides with increasing concern about food security, urban sustainability, social isolation and the preservation of community space. Community gardening has been adopted by divergent actors, from health agencies looking to increase fruit and vegetable consumption to radical social movements seeking symbols of non-capitalist social and spatial relations. This thesis contributes to a systematic research account of the Australian community gardening movement by considering community gardening as a site of collective social action.

Drawing on a tradition of activist research, the analysis focuses on ethnographic case studies of three key organisations within the Australian community gardening movement. These case studies portray community gardening activity at three scales: a garden, an organisation supporting and promoting community gardening at a city-wide level, and the national community gardening organisation.

Drawing on social movement theory, the thesis investigates the ways community gardeners in these organisations approach environmental and social justice issues and considers the relationships between community gardening and wider movements. In particular, the thesis considers the political logic of community gardeners’ collective practices, revealing the specific methods community gardeners use to enact social change. It then considers whether community gardening can be seen as a form of political praxis. The thesis shows that community gardening is used strategically and intentionally as a performance to make collective claims. In some contexts and to the extent to which it is so used, it argues that community gardening can be understood as a social movement practice. Finally, the thesis contends that community gardeners’ strategies are part of a repertoire of collective action, which offers both a contribution to existing understandings of collective action and a critique of current conceptualisations of activism.

The thesis foregrounds community garden organisers’ analyses of the change they wish to see, the tactics they choose, and the role ‘constructive’ and prefigurative repertoires play in movements for change. In doing so it makes a unique contribution to the existing literature on both community gardening and environmental social movements.

See the complete paper here.

The Seed Savers’ Network

Bit by bit we have produced 350 video clips and uploaded them to Seed Savers’ Youtube channel. We were inspired by our visits to farmers and gardeners around the world and by Seed Savers’ garden of 1000 food species in Byron Bay, Australia. We show you how we save seeds, grow and process our food; people and produce on markets in several countries and food we glean on our travels.

Welcome to The Seed Savers’ Network of Australia

The Seed Savers’ Network is an Australian-based organisation established in 1986 to preserve local varieties of useful plants. There are more than eighty Local Seed Networks for local gardeners around Australia. We are also active in forty countries so far. See About Us where you will find an overview of our activities, the countries in which we have worked, our story so far with archives of our work and how you can get involved. See also an overview of our Permaculture roots.

Founders, Jude and Michel Fanton, have authored and published three books, best seller “The Seed Savers’ Handbook”with 32000 copies sold with some free text available on www.seedsavers.net, “Local Seed Network Manual” and “Seed to Seed Food Gardens in Schools” and produced a one hour documentary, “Our Seeds” – purchase our publications or film. Our new documentary “Our Roots” that we filmed in Vanuatu for CIRAD the French research institute will be out soon. Please use the resources we offer at no cost to you and without sponsored links.

Film clips from our seed travels. We have filmed and produced hundreds of clips and uploaded them to Seedsavers Youtube channel. Topics include home seed production, unusual varieties of food plants on markets, food production and distribution systems.

See the short clips here.

Produced by Friends of the Earth Adelaide, Australia

Tracing the history of food gathering and production on the Adelaide Plains, from the Kaurna Aboriginal nation to present day backyard gardens, An Urban Orchard is a celebration of growing and sharing good food.

In the inner southern suburbs of the city of Adelaide, South Australia, local residents meet to share the bounty of their backyards.

Part 2

Around the table of the ‘Urban Orchard’ produce exchange, people from diverse backgrounds share their knowledge of food production and preparation. While deceptively simple, the exchange is a rich opportunity for building community, reducing waste and powerful element in emerging local food systems, where the talk is more often of ‘food metres’ than ‘food miles’.

Focussing on the emergence of homegrown fruit and vegetable exchanges, the film follows the journeys of local gardeners involved in the exchange and offers inspiration for other communities to build more just, sustainable and local food systems in their neighbourhoods.

Part 3

See Friends of the Earth Adelaide here.

For $100 plus we will supply you a fully equipped Eco-Coop complete with 2 hens and all their requirements. Six weeks to decide.

Rentachook is located in West Ryde, NSW, Australia

Rentachook started 6 years ago as an idea to encourage people to keep chickens – an environmentally sustainable pet. The concept is that you get to try keeping chooks without having to commit to having them permanently.

Like a try-before-you-buy option, what happens is you buy the Eco-Coop package outright (a chicken coop, 2 hens, feeder, waterer, food and straw) but have 6 weeks to decide if keeping chooks is right for you, your lifestyle, your garden etc.

If you decide to return the chooks and coop, you get your deposit returned and it has only cost you $100. Longer trial periods can easily be negotiated, but we find that 6 weeks is usually about enough time to come to a decision.

Returned coops are sold to other customers and the chooks don’t mind at all.

We also sell coops in three sizes, chooks on their own, certified organic stockfeed and many other items to ensure you have everything you need to be confident in keeping chooks at home. Although Rentachook is Sydney based, we sell flatpack chicken coops around Australia and can hook you up with a local supplier of hens (and in many cases organic feed locally as well).

At Rentachook we manufacture and sell; hen houses, chicken coops, chook houses, chook coops, chook houses, chicken houses for those who want to keep chooks or chickens in their backyard or at home or who surf the net using google (I’m hoping this paragraph will increase the hits on my website). Worth a try eh!

See their website here.

Nevin and Linda Sweeney’s website is named “Under the Choko Tree”

By Nevin and Linda Sweeney
Website includes 161 articles on their experiences.

Excerpt:

Back in the late ‘70s I packed up my new bride and set off for the wilds of…………….. Western Sydney! Well it was a little bit wild back then. The estate had no shops and no public transport but the housing and the loans were cheap and so we found ourselves on a 600 m2 block with an east-west facing, brick veneer, 3 bedroom house.

After many threats to head bush we are still here, concentrating on living as self sufficiently and sustainably as we can in the suburban environment. Here are some of the things we are up to –

We grow as much of our own veggies as we can organically, using open pollinated seed, our own where we can. We make seed rasing mix using worm castings, sand and cocopeat, once the seedlings are up we pot them on into cardboard tubes and then plant them out when they are ready. I have developed a spreadsheet that follows a two weekly sow/pot on/plant out rotation. We have a small greenhouse that we use to raise seedlings and grow a bit of out of season stuff during winter. During summer we have a shade “cupboard” that we use to raise the seedlings in.

I get in grass hay from a local supplier and let it get worked over by the chooks and then use it as mulch. We have 13 beds, each about 1m x 2 metres. We fertilise using a chook tractor which is designed to sit directly over a veggie bed. The chook tractor spends tow weeks on each bed twice a year. The chook tractor has 4 chooks in it and we can get up to 4 eggs a day but we also have the “Retirement Village”, a shed where the non-productive chooks still do meaningful work by digging over the hay and turning it into mulch.

We also have fruit trees – a mandarin; lemon, lemonade and orange tree, half a dozen bananas in a banana circle, a mulberry tree, native plum, olive, feijoa and two lime trees (one Tahitian, one Kaffir) and more recently a couple of apples, a nectarine and macadamia nut. We have a carob tree which we have had for many years and it flowered for the first time a couple of years ago, but it turned out to be male, so no carob pods for us and I am just considering taking it out.

We have two recycled steel bathtubs, one which we use as a fishpond but also grows water chestnuts and an similar plant called Arrow with decorative arrow shaped leaves. The other houses our worm farm which helps us process our veggie waste and provides castings to make the seed rasing mix with.

More on their website here. Be sure to take the time to dig deep into the links on their site. The authors share lots of their experiences.

Conference to be held in Brisbane in 2012

Integrated Urban Aquaponics
Conference and Workshops
in Brisbane in July, 2012.

May 26, 2011.

The world’s first conference and workshops focused on integrated urban aquaponics in “protected cropping” systems producing organic food, will be held in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia from July 25 to 27, 2012.

The conference and workshops will be organized by the Aquaponics Network Australia (ANA), solely-owned by Brisbane-based Aquaponix Pty Ltd., in conjunction with the Green Infrastructure Network Australia Inc. (GINA Inc).

The conference will be held at Whites Hill State College (WHSC), at Camp Hill, Brisbane, Queensland, which will soon begin developing Brisbane’s fourth aquaponics unit for better teaching science, maths and integrated sustainability to high-school students.

Geoff Wilson, director of ANA and president of GINA Inc., said: “The three-day Integrated Urban Aquaponics Conference will be promoted to about 2,500 high school science teachers and about 150 high-school curriculum developers and trainers in Western Pacific countries.

“Aquaponics is the modern name for a technology used thousands of years ago by the Chinese (fish in rice paddies) and the Aztecs (chinampa structures that are still serving Mexico City). It combines intensive fish farming with intensive growing of plants from fish wastes converted to plant nutrients..

Over the last 30 years aquaponics technology had been refined mostly via universities or researchers and investors in the United States and Canada. It is now starting to become popular in Australia for better teaching of high-school science and technology, and for hobby growing of organic food at home,” Mr Wilson said.

Three key speakers/workshop leaders at the Urban Aquaponics Conference will be:

• Sarah Kaatz, education director of Nelson & Pade Inc., Wisconsin, United States. She has a Master of Science in Fisheries Biology and Aquaculture from Iowa State and a Bachelor of Science in Biology from University of Wisconsin, United States. Sarah is involved in workshops, the extended stay learning program and working with schools to integrate aquaponics into existing curriculums for students of all ages.

• Professor James Rakocy, who recently-retired from 30-years of aquaponics teaching at the University of Virgin Islands – the world’s first aquaponics education unit.

• Dr Wilson Lennard, the first Australian to complete a doctorate degree in aquaponics, who is now developing commercial aquaponics in Australia and New Zealand.

Other expert speakers are being recruited from Australia and New Zealand.

The world’s first Integrated Urban Aquaponics Teaching Unit is proposed as one of five parts of the Whites Hill State College’s proposed Sustainability Education Pilot Project.

Geoff Wilson said: “We plan to develop this Integrated Urban Aquaponics Teaching Unit with all speed so that teachers, students and parents – plus community groups – can be quickly shown many aspects of what we are trying to achieve.
Over an estimated five years of development, the WHSC aquaponics unit will integrate and teach on:

* Three styles of aquaponics.
* Water harvesting (rain, dew and solar-powered air moisture harvesting).
* Water cleaning (via greenery and new pervious paving technology).
* Non-carbon electrical power supply (solar panels cooled by greenery for 10% increase in electrical power).
* Solar powered and wood-waste water heating for both fish and plant growing efficiency.
* Recycling of clean organic matter into fish feeds (via worms and insects).
* Algae production for fish feeds containing both protein and omega-3 oil.
* Wall and roof greenery for improving the psychological and air-cleaning benefits of the structure.

The integrated teaching unit is planned to be fully operational by July 25 and 27, 2012, when Whites Hill State College will be the venue for the Integrated Urban Aquaponics Conference aimed at helping Western Pacific high school science and maths teachers learn how to better teach their subjects.

The conference is the first event proposed for the Whites Hill State College’s proposed Sustainability Education Pilot Project. The WHSC event in 2012 is expected to be on the psychological and air cleaning benefits of greenery in classrooms, offices and homes..

Further Information and pictures:

Geoff Wilson,
Director, Aquaponics Network Australia,
President, Green Infrastructure Network Inc.
32 David Road,
Holland Park 4121, Qld.

Phones: 0412 622 779 or 3411 4524
Email: wilson.geoff@optusnet.com.au

An E-book

By Sharon and Andrew Cooper
Queensland, Australia
3/31/2011

“The award winning horticulturists Sharon and Andrew Cooper from Queensland, Australia go public with their top secrets on how to easily grow a vegetable garden that provides maximum nutrition at a minimum price. Their newly released book, Our Vegetable Garden Secrets, is a simple, practical and complete source of information that provides all you need to know about preparing soil, caring for plants, protecting from disease and pests, and as a result, growing vegetables that are 40-60% more nutritious than their supermarket alternative.

“Our Vegetable Garden Secrets has the support of the highly regarded Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, and in his foreword its executive director Professor Robert Graham writes: “Our Vegetable Garden Secrets marries the joy of gardening and the benefits of growing your own produce – a real plus for anyone wishing to take control of their health and help reduce the risk of contracting serious illness”. A portion of the proceeds of the book will go to support the Foundation’s life-saving research.

“As parents, as well as people touched by serious illness in their own family, Sharon and Andrew Cooper share the universal concerns about nutrition, risks such as obesity and diabetes and the effects of chemicals on future generations. “We want to share hundreds of strategies, perfected over years of professional experience, for everything from soil preparation and natural pest control to the selection of your Superfoods for planting,” says Sharon. “We show you how to grow nutritious food without special tools or ingredients and how doing this reduces your chances of heart attack, cancer, type 2 diabetes, obesity and other degenerative diseases ”.

“This book gives practical ways to protect the health of your loved ones by reducing chemicals and increasing antioxidants in their food. Gardeners of every skill level can benefit from Our Vegetable Garden Secrets, but the most benefits will be reaped by the first time gardeners. They have to make a lot of choices, need to learn a lot about gardening as their plants grow, get sick, need their attention, and the amount of information can be just overwhelming at first. Now they can confidently follow the path that Sharon and Andrew drafted for them, and get all necessary information from one source, on time, and on budget. With over 130 color images Sharon also provides free garden designs and after-purchase support to her clients.”

See their website here.

His 1000 litre tank can hold 10-20 perch or 40-60 crayfish

By Liina Flynn
Northern Rivers Echo
21st October 2010

Excerpt:

Wayne believes if more people can produce food in urban areas then rural land could be used for growing large-scale grain crops, or crops to make products currently made out of oil such as bioplastics, or hemp for clothes.

In the backyard in his 1000 litre tank, Wayne currently has a few perch, but said it can hold 10-20 perch or 40-60 crayfish. There are plant pots sitting in the pipes running around the tank, which are watered with the nutrient rich tank water. Deep-rooted plants are planted in the garden to pick up nutrients deep in the soil and are even used in the tank to filter the water. He has created a biological cycle where everything is used: from food scraps which feed the worms, which in turn feed the garden and the chooks.

On the roof of the house, Wayne has installed a three kilowatt solar energy system and said the household only uses half of the power generated from it, with the rest being fed back into the grid and generating about $3000 a year in income. Next to it is an efficient solar tube-style hot water system that only needs two hours of sunlight to generate hot water for showers and washing clothes.

“For a $20,000 investment, people can have a sustainable house,” Wayne said

Future plans include installing more water tanks and a grey water system to reuse kitchen and shower water in the garden.

Read the complete article here.

Produced by The Australian City Farms and Community Gardens Network

With researchers increasingly turning their attention to the social and environmental impacts of community gardening, the Australian City Farms and Community Gardens Network has just published a fully revised and expanded second edition of its Annotated Bibliography of community gardening research and analysis. The new edition provides a comprehensive summary of the latest research right up to August 2010.

The Australian City Farms and Community Gardens Network has produced the Bibliography in response to requests from students and researchers, and from gardeners seeking evidence of the benefits of community gardening to support their applications and submissions.

What’s included

Community Gardening: An Annotated Bibliography includes brief descriptions of guidebooks and manuals, books, Doctoral, Honours and Masters theses, articles in academic and professional journals, and a number of other research-based documents, such as project evaluations and submissions.

In addition, there are brief introductions to sources on key areas that provide additional context and evidence for community gardening: therapeutic horticulture, urban and civic agriculture, food security, organics and permaculture.

The emphasis is in this publication is on furthering understanding of community gardening in Australia. Hence we have attempted to be exhaustive in our inclusion of Australian sources. Community Gardening: An Annotated Bibliography also includes many sources from and about North America and Britain. It doesn’t include all published research about British allotments, though it does include a number of articles that raise issues relevant to Australia. The substantial literature on gardening in schools is also omitted, but will hopefully be covered in a future publication.

Get copies of the 50 page booklet here, a free download.

55 minutes of audio discussion on Australia Talks

ABC Radio National
April 5, 2010

Agriculture in Australia accounts for less than five percent of GDP – about the same as the creative industries – yet the world’s food supply faces unprecedented challenges from population growth, and climate change. Could urban food production be a possible solution? Join us for a special edition of Australia Talks recorded at the Queensland State Library with contributors to the latest Griffith Review: “Food Chain”.

Speakers:

Professor Brendan Gleeson, Centre Director, Urban Research Program, Griffith University

Adjunct Professor Tony Fry, Director of sustainability consultancy Team D-E-S; Head of Griffith University’s Design Futures Program, and farm forester.

Virginia Balfour, Journalist and permaculture activist

Visit the ABC site here to listen to the discussion.

Out of the Scientist’s Garden – A Story of Water and Food

By Richard Stirzaker
CSIRO Publishing
January 2010

Out of the Scientist’s Garden is written for anyone who wants to understand food and water a little better – for those growing vegetables in a garden, food in a subsistence plot or crops on vast irrigated plains. It is also for anyone who has never grown anything before but has wondered how we will feed a growing population in a world of shrinking resources.

Although a practising scientist in the field of water and agriculture, the author has written, in story form accessible to a wide audience, about the drama of how the world feeds itself. The book starts in his own fruit and vegetable garden, exploring the ‘how and why’ questions about the way things grow, before moving on to stories about soil, rivers, aquifers and irrigation. The book closes with a brief history of agriculture, how the world feeds itself today and how to think through some of the big conundrums of modern food production.

Watering the world from a Canberra backyard

Richard’s garden takes up about every inch of soil on his block, and none of it is wasted either in producing crops or for providing data for his experiments. See the excellent audio slide show on this garden here.

By Jim Trail
666ABC Canberra
10 February, 2010

Excerpt:

Richard Stirzaker is a man obsessed with water, and turning it into food.

He’s been involved with it ever since growing up in South Africa, surrounded by vegetables – a habit he’s carried around the southern hemisphere and that has flourished on his quarter-acre block in Canberra’s northern suburbs.

There are very few centimetres of soil on his O’Connor block that aren’t working hard to turn water into food, be they grapes, peaches, pumpkins, or even eggs as processed by the resident chickens. But where Richard’s garden differs to most back yard vege patches is in the cabling.

Richard’s garden is fully wired, moisture detectors here, a solar panel above, more equipment over there – and he can check the lot from the internet.

Richard is a CSIRO scientist, who has taken the old adage, “Do something you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life”, to new levels. One of the very handy tools he’s developed to assist gardening is the Full Stop Wetting Front Detector.

Developed at the CSIRO, it’s a device that indicates when water has reached the bottom of the root zone and is hence enough water to provide adequate irrigation for growing without waste.

The garden around Richard’s house would put many a commercial market garden to shame, the produce is fresh, full and beautiful so it’s no surprise to find that, in a former life, Richard’s spent time working on market gardens where, in terms of sales, the visual value of a crop is at least as important as the nutritional value.

See the rest of the article here.

See the web site for Out of the Scientist’s Garden here.

By Elise Harris
Email: eliseharris2@gmail.com
An Honours thesis submitted as part of a Bachelor in Urban and Regional Planning School of Natural and Built Environments University of South Australia
October 2008

Excerpts:

Abstract

Community gardens have been shown to have positive social, nutritional and educational benefits for their users, and improve the amenity, safety and patronage of the surrounding area. They also tie into wider themes of sustainability and food security. Despite these benefits, urban planners, as the keepers of land and determiners of land use, have had little to do with community gardens. This thesis will explain the benefits of community gardens and detail planning policies throughout the world that support community gardens. Lastly, recommendations will be made on how the South Australian planning system can better support community gardens.

1. Introduction

Community gardens create the types of social and environmental benefits that planners often strive to achieve in their work. They break down barriers between people, increase socialisation, provide exercise, improve nutrition and create safer spaces. Why then, have community gardens been overlooked by planners? A lack of interest and lack of knowledge has meant that planners have been ignoring community gardens in planning policy and literature, and inadvertently creating barriers to the creation of community gardens. This thesis argues that planners should become involved in creating, protecting and promoting community gardens, because of the multiple benefits that they offer. To aid them in this task, plans from around the world have been searched for planning policies that relate to community gardens. These plans have then been used to guide recommendations on how the South Australian planning system can aid community gardens.

This thesis will seek to promote the promotion, protection and creation of community gardens in the South Australian planning system. Firstly, a case will be made for the promotion of community gardens by urban planners, by explaining the benefits of community gardens. The literature on urban planning for community gardens will be discussed to give understanding and context to the issue, and then the state of planning for community gardens in South Australia and Australia will be ascertained by searching for planning policies that relate to community gardens. International planning policies will be examined to find the types of policies that could be used in South Australia to promote community gardens. Lastly, recommendations will be made for how South Australia can better plan for community gardens.

This introductory section will explain the broad global factors affecting the food supply, the implications for Australia and the role that planners can play in increasing food security.

6. Conclusion

This thesis has concentrated on a way that planners can improve people’s food security – by supporting the development of community gardens. It has been shown that community gardens can also contribute to other desirable outcomes, such as improved health, crime reduction and community building. A literature review has found that the literature on urban planning on community gardens is not well developed, and that the broader concept of urban planning and food is still a relatively new field of planning. Most of the literature comes from the USA and Canada, and very little comes from Australia. Critical analysis of the literature and policies was limited by the lack of negative or dissenting views on community gardens, and research into the effectiveness of the policies. The low awareness of the importance of planning for food could explain why there are so few planning policies in Australia that relate to community gardens. Hopefully, this will change. Planners are well- placed to aid the development of community gardens, and there are a wide range of policy options of aiding in their creation, promotion and protection. To stimulate change in South Australia, a range of planning policies from around the world have been discussed, which have guided recommendations for how the South Australian planning system can plan for community gardens at the state and local level. The task now is for community groups to push for the recommendations to be put into policy, and for planners to recognise the benefits of community gardens, and aid in their development. By doing this, wider social and environmental causes will be aided, and cities will be better prepared for future food price increases from the decline in global agricultural production, and the double threats of climate change and peak oil.

The complete thesis can be found here.

There’s a growing city appetite for what we once had down on the farm

JULIANNE SCHULTZ
The Sydney Morning Herald
January 23, 2010

When I was growing up, in the 1960s, the supply of food we ate was tangible – outside the dining room window. We had cows for milk; sheep that grew from suckling lambs to Sunday lunch; chooks whose eggs we ate, and whose feathers we plucked, when their recently headless bodies stopped the mad dervish dance; vegetables that still had clods of dirt on them.

Our animals were not pets – they were creatures that fed us and that could be trucked to the saleyard to pay pressing bills. It was smelly, dirty, unrelenting hard work, even on the fertile plains of Victoria’s western district.

Most of the time we ate what my father produced, and my mother cooked. We did not think we were fortunate; it was the way life was. Food came from the ground; it was seasonal, predictable and, apart from the occasional pavlova or brandy snap, pretty boring. Even our city cousins had chooks in their yards – those in the southern states had mandarins, apples, almonds, plums and apricots, and the northerners had mangoes, pawpaws and bananas.

Occasionally we glimpsed another world. Friends, who owned a big farm nearby, would load us in their Chevrolet to town. It was a treat and signalled the cheque for their fine wool had arrived. In the milk bar, they would buy us Chiko rolls, Violet Crumbles and Tarax soft drinks and laugh kindly as we devoured this exotic food. I recall furtive talks with my sister. ”This must be the food rich people eat; if only we lived in the city we could eat this stuff all the time.”

We were wrong. Rich city people are more likely to want to consume the food we grew up with – local, seasonal and organic. Poor people are much more likely to eat the cheap, mass-produced and packaged sustenance sold in convenience stores.

The disconnection between food production and consumption, between the food available to the rich and the rest, is now a matter of global anxiety. It is set to become more pronounced as the world’s population soars to 9 billion and global warming disrupts traditional weather patterns. The Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates there are at least 900 million people without enough to eat every day. Even in developed countries, despite an epidemic of obesity, a shockingly large number of people go hungry – 49 million people in America alone last year.

The enormousness of the problem makes it hard not to be pessimistic. A more enlightened approach to feeding the world’s hungry – by giving them the tools for sustainable production rather than having them wait for shipments of instant noodles or powdered milk – is producing impressive results, but the challenge looms like a threat.

Food production and food security will be a bellwether of climate change. As more than half the world’s population now lives in cities, urban food production will overtake the rural-peasant allotment of old.

See the complete article here.

See larger image of the Farm plan here.

By sydneycityfarm
18th November 2009

Sydney siders are one step closer to having a City Farm and Sustainable Living Centre with the unanimous support of the City of Sydney Environment & Heritage Committee to fund an investigation into potential sites and models.

City of Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore spoke in support of the proposal which goes before a full sitting of Council on Monday November 23.

“City Farms provide real, hands-on experiences to teach residents, businesses and schools about sustainable living. City Farms demonstrate the simple ways that everyone can Live Green and give the community access to local organic produce.”

“It’s fantastic that the Environment & Heritage Committee is so supportive of having a City Farm where Sydney residents can grow healthy local food and learn about sustainability,” said Sydney City Farm President Andrew Jackson.

“A City Farm modelled on successful urban farms like CERES in Melbourne and Northey Street City Farm in Brisbane is a perfect fit with plans for a Sustainable Sydney by 2030 ,” said Mr Jackson.

The Sydney City Farm non-profit group proposed the idea to Council in August this year. The group was formed to create a vibrant centre of learning and community participation where Sydney residents will be inspired to learn to grow their own food, compost and recycle; as well find out about the latest water and energy saving technologies.

“Like Stephanie Alexander’s Kitchen Garden projects, the City Farm is an idea whose time is well and truly here. Wherever we hold information stalls people are super-keen to get involved,” said Mr Jackson.  “We are sure that when City of Sydney Council identifies a preferred site and begins the consultation process, there will be overwhelming community support for the idea.”

“Ultimately our vision is for a network of City Farms, including our original proposal for a 3 hectare City Farm inside Callan Park,” said Mr Jackson.

To find out more, visit www.sydneycityfarm.org

See the CITY FARM PROPOSAL proposal to the ENVIRONMENT AND HERITAGE COMMITTEE, 16 NOVEMBER 2009 here.

Permablitz: new word, noun

1. An event in which volunteers use permaculture principles to transform a suburban garden into a place that produces its own food. A combination of the words permaculture – a design system for sustainable living and land use – and Backyard Blitz a television program in which backyards receive a makeover.

The rules of a permablitz are simple: if you want a permablitz crew to turn up to your place, you have to help out on at least two other working weekends before they will do so. In addition, Palmer defines a permablitz as a day in which “two or more people come together to:

a. create or add to edible gardens where someone lives;

b. share skills relating to permaculture and sustainable living;

c. build community networks;

d. have fun.

What happens on the day of a permablitz?

Every blitz is different. But you can expect to be welcomed with a cup of tea. There will be an intro circle in which the design for the day and the ideas behind it will be explained and then we’ll get to work. There will be tasks like weeding, planting fruit trees, digging paths and swales, making vegetable beds with no-dig methods or implementing greywater systems. You’ll be shown what to do and be working with others, and there will be short workshops relating to the activities. There will probably be some other workshops on the day too.

The host will provide a shared lunch — bring something if you would like to share, but you don’t have to. By about four o’clock we’ll break and thank everyone. By then, quite a transformation should have taken place! You’ll hopefully go home brimming with ideas, having met lots of wonderful people, having had a taste of permaculture design and having been learning by doing.

See article: Blitzing the ‘burbs.

See Permablitz website.

Imagine having forty volunteers, some of whom you’ve never met, come over to your place to build you the perfect, sustainable backyard. Sound too good to be true? Well its not, and its called Permablitz. Costa spends an inspirational Sunday in suburban Melbourne and meets the heroes behind this garden revolution.

See Costa’s show on permablitzing a garden in Melbourne here.

Costa’s Garden Odyssey

Six episodes of Season One are now on-line in brilliant colour. See what’s happening in the city of Melbourne. You must see these shows! (Mike)

Examples of stories from the show:

Collingwood is an inner city suburb of Melbourne and it’s the home of the Collingwood Children’s Farm, a special place where children enjoy the opportunity to have some “hands on” experience with farm animals. It’s also a community garden where Costa meets people like 70-year-old Harry Haralambos who grows wonderful produce for his entire family here as well as Joy McGaffrey who introduces Costa to the taste of “Worm Juice”.

Nestled amongst the concrete jungle of the largest housing commission unit facility in NSW, Riverwood Community Garden in Sydney South West is literally a united nations of gardening. With 55 individual plots cultivated by gardeners from 14 nationalities the most common language spoken here, is the language of gardening.

The cultural mix at Riverwood is astounding, and the interview between Mr Pham, a Vietnamese man of 86 years and his 80 something year old Lebanese mate Jacob, was Costa’s personal highlight of the entire series. Costa was moved to tears as (through the help of two interpreters) as these two men spoke for the first time and expressed their feelings for each other. Here, they are share garden plots, produce, and have shared time together for all these years, without ever speaking the same language. Their love and camaraderie created by the community garden is an inspiration for all. Both have come from war torn worlds, Vietnam and Lebanon, and this humble community garden 1000’s of miles away serves as a United Nations Assembly, washing away the ravages, the heartache, and the futility of war and replacing it with the cabbages, the artichokes and the fertility of gardening.

Australia is regarded as one of the most multi-cultural countries in the world, and the suburb of Cabramatta typifies this more than most. Ninety percent of the students at Cabramatta Primary School are from non-english speaking backgrounds. With this in mind teacher Joanne Laxton has implemented a program that not only exposes the students to the joys of gardening but also gives them the opportunity to retain some of their cultural heritage. The warm welcome and enthusiasm shown by the students prompts Costa to provide his own touch to this remarkable program.

About Costa’s Garden Odyssey

Costa is a man of the people. A man who can connect with all. His infectious character and passion for his subject puts people at ease and makes them shine.

A Landscape Architect with an all-consuming passion for plants and people – Costa knows how to find the best in both of them, and takes great pleasure in bringing them together.

Costa’s Garden Odyssey is a groundbreaking magazine style series that allows this unique Greek Garden Guru an opportunity to do what he does best – spread his green wisdom while communicating with people and celebrating cultures and community in a way never seen before on Australian television.

Link to show here.