Sydney City Farm voluntary community representatives – applications now open

The City of Sydney is now accepting applications for four community representatives to join the Sydney City Farm Advisory Panel. Working with Sydney City Farm partners, the Powerhouse Museum and the City of Sydney, the community representatives will guide and review the development and implementation of the City Farm and provide input into the preparation of the business plan and design brief for the project master plan before they are submitted to Council for endorsement.

Applications close on 17 February 2012.

SKILLS

Skills sought of community representatives include:

• experience in engaging and working with community groups in developing new community facilities
• capability to represent relevant community interest in the City Farm project
• experience or working knowledge of the operation of a city farm, particularly community engagement and sustainability education
• ability to work collaboratively in decision making and to work effectively with the City Farm partners and stakeholders
• understanding of the importance of behavioural change in relation to sustainability education
• knowledge of the key components of sustainable urban development, urban agriculture and community food systems
• basic understanding of social enterprise models of structuring not-for-profit enterprise or alternative structures such as incorporated associations and small business.

A knowledge of sustainable urbanism and the principles of placemaking, urban food security, collaborative decision making and contemporary, behaviour-based trends and approaches to sustainability education would likewise prove relevant.

COMMITTED VOLUNTEERS

These are voluntary positions for committed people in the Sydney area. The initial commitment of three years includes monthly meetings of around two hours with additional time required between meetings for correspondence and other communication as required.

INFORMATION & APPLICATIONS

Information:

http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/Residents/ParksAndLeisure/CommunityGardens/documents/CityFarmAdvisoryGroup-EOI-InformationPackage.pdf (PDF 132kB)

Application form:

http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/Residents/ParksAndLeisure/CommunityGardens/documents/CityFarmAdvisoryGroup-EOI-ApplicationForm-Worddoc.pdf (PDF 63kB)

 Website:

http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/Residents/ParksAndLeisure/CommunityGardens/SydneyCityFarm.asp

Contact

Russ Grayson
Community Gardens & Landcare Coordinator
City Of Sydney
Tel: 02 9265 9786
Fax: 02 0265 9660
Mob: 0418 114 172
rgrayson@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au

http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/Residents/ParksAndLeisure/CommunityGardens/Default.asp

www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au

When I made presentations there was no generally accepted term, no name to frame these disperate initiatives and ideas. The nearest to an inclusive, collective name we had was ‘food security’, but this said little about the contribution to regional economies made by the urban food supply chain and the future of city fringe market gardeners, orchardists and poultry producers. Then, along came ‘food sovereignty’ with its implications of control over one’s food supply and the right to choose to eat food prepared, sold and distributed in a way acceptable to the eater. This introduced a political element and supported fair economic returns to farmers.

Bringing the food to the city... farmers' markets offer an option to the supermarket for authentically fresh food.

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Food security… food sovereignty… it might seem that we’re playing with words, and that’s true. But words are important. Naming imparts meaning to a practice or set of ideas and positions it in the social marketplace for ideas. Chosen carefully, the names given to ideas and practices frame them in a context and can create a positive mental image around them. Carefully chosen names makes ideas comprehensible to people, to those in professional practice as well as to those engaged in community-based education and advocacy.

In doing those talks around our food systems, what I needed was a term that gathered together the concept of urban food security and the right of people to make their own food choices—the ‘food sovereignty’ element—added the idea of the need for a secure and resilient food supply for our cities towns—and to link this to the practice of urban planning that plays a role in either disabling or enabling viable, regional food economies and the access that people have to fresh food. The name, the term I sought would have had to be acceptable to those making decisions about urban landuse and economy – local governments and planners – as well as to community and small business food enterprise and to the public interested in such things.

Just as tagging digital files offers up a broad range of material when you make a search on your computer, so should the tag we give to this diversity of practices, planning concepts and community initiatives. Urban food security, nutritional health, urban planning, social and economic innovation and the sustainability and food resiliency of our towns and cities would all have to be included. The tag—the name—would have to offer urban food advocates and sustainability educators in local government and community education a convenient, meaningful and timely term to bring together discussion of the plethora of community-based and mainstream food initiatives and ideas about the food system now starting to vie for the attention of the public.

Something new

Not properly recognised as an important element in our socially and ecologically sustainable future until a few years ago, food and the security of its supply is now regarded as of equal importance to energy, water, transport and waste by a growing number of sustainability thinkers, educators and urban planners.

The importance of food choices to sustainable cities was emphasised by the Victorian Eco Innovation Lab (VEIL), part of the University of Melbourne, in a report a few years ago. The report, Safe and Secure Food Systems for Victoria, made the link between food, waste and resource use. Food choices, the report stated, account for:

• 50% household water use; this accounts for the water used to grow or produce the food plus that consumed in processing; this volume of water embodied in food has become known as ‘virtual water’; its total can be compared to the 11% of water used in the house and garden
• 28% household greenhouse gas emissions compared to 20% attributable to direct household energy use and 10% to transport; the total includes emissions from food production and transportation through the food supply chain
• 40% of household food waste to landfill in Melbourne, made up of food organics.

These findings place food choices as some of the most important to sustainability and turn those seemingly simple choices into keystone choices. Just as a keystone is critical to holding up an arch, so food choice is a keystone consideration in holding up our future sustainability.

Food education

Many local government sustainability educators work in waste education and when they include food in their work focus mainly on food waste. This is not to deny that food waste is a mammoth problem, as the NSW government’s Love Food Hate Waste program disclosed when in reporting that the state wastes 800,000 tonnes or more than $2.5 billion of food a year. Add to that the totals for the other states and you have a major waste of both food and money.

Focusing on food waste is important, especially if we can highlight ways to compost it into fertiliser and return that to the market gardens on the city fringe.

Loal government sustainability educators and their counterparts in community oganisations are doing more than focusing on food waste. Many, such as groups gathered around the Transition Towns idea and Permaculture design, encourage food production for household self-provisioning in home and community gardens. This constitutes a renewal of the long Australian tradition of home gardening… the vegetable patch and chook run in the backyard. In our big cities however, there is diminishing opportunity for this as urban consolidation and higher density living—which are planning responses to curbing the urban sprawl that destroys the city-fringe market gardens that feed the city—reduce the size of home gardens and eliminate them entrely. For urban centres in our big cities, the work of local government and community educators may need to start to include more on food distribution opportinities than food production.

If food really is to become a core component in sustainability education and planning then we need to a whole systems approach that looks at the food system in its entirety from farming, through processing and distribution to consumption and on to dealing with food waste.

There has been no framework for sustainability educators to adopt such a whole food systems approach and no simple way to context their educational work within urban food systems, the structures through which food arrives on the tables and in the takeaway containers of eaters in town and city. Until now.

FSPUD

Food Sensitive Planning and Urban Design is a concept that combines food and its acquisition with the planning needs of cities. The name plays on that of Water Sensitive Urban Design, WSUD, which moved rapidly from good idea to adoption by planners and local government. Hopefully, FSUD will follow a similar trajectory.

Enabling this will be a new concept document from the VEIL team called, in a play on acronym, Food Sensitive Planning and Urban Design—FSPUD. Get it? As in potato.

According to the publication, planners seldom consider food and the security of its supply in their work. “They see food as someone elses’ responsibility and so it falls through the cracks… there is no explicit recognition of food in planning documents”, says the authors.

Clearly it really is time for planners to think about the security of our own urban food supply. Reinforcing this are a number of facts:

• agriculture uses between 65 and 70 percent of Australia’s fresh water supply, giving food production and distribution an important role in a country that suffers periodic drought that brings water use restrictions to our cities
• the global food crisis of 2007/08 when costs rose so astronomically there were food riots in around 32 countries and some grain producing nations ceased to export so as to retain their crop for their own use
• the near-loss of the food productivity of the Murray basin several years ago when drought threatened the food supply of our south-eastern cities
• the emergence of ‘food deserts’ in parts of our cities where nourishng – as opposed to fatty fast foods – are not in easy reach of households, a failure of both professional and local government planning.

Food Sensitive Planning and Urban Design is more than a concept paper. It is an introductory text to the topic and a scoping document that explores its parameters. It’s where planners and food system advocates can start their reading to educate themselves on the potential of food production and distribution as well as the food security of the city and the food sovereignty of its residents.

Challenge and opportunity

It’s not that there are no opportunities to do this. Planners and local government can incorporate food sensitive urban design by combining food production and distribution with other planning goals to create attractive, liveable surroundings.

Additionally, food sensitive urban design offers an opportunity to strengthen community interactions in diversified, shared places such as parks when it incorporates community food production initiatives like city farms, community gardens and food swaps. The evidence that people want to participate in activities as simple as food swaps and community food production is the popularity of these initiatives… perhaps they’re a means through which people get a sense of the place where they live, a sense of belonging and inclusion and of community, a need identified by Australian social researcher, Hugh Mackay. Including these things in urban place design is best seen as diversifying recreational, educational and community engagement options on public land along with traditional, city parkland uses of the land.

“There is increasing evidence that involvement in the provision of food, be it growing, cooking or social eating, can improve healthy eating behaviour, increase opportunities for social engagement and connection to nature and help foster increased self-esteem and a sense of achievement”, summarises the report.

The VEIL document proposes that planners think about including opportunities for food systems in city planning by local government and the private sector:

• creating the option for food production in city farms (which serve educational and recreational needs as well as offering a DIY or commercial approach to food production) and in community food gardens; these can also build social capital through the cooperation necessary in managing them
• incidental food production such as productive (selected nut and fruit) street and parkland trees for shade, amenity and neighbourhood character
• incorporating access to fresh food sources via public  transport, a need highlighted by organisations like the Sydney Food Fairness Alliance
• resource recovery from urban food waste as an agricultural input.

The report found that socially and economically advantaged neighbourhoods have a greater number of supermarkets and fruit and vegetable retailers within close proximity to residences. In contrast, low density urban growth such as that occurring on the fringes of our metropolitan areas and in the exurbs, the report points out, ” …results in communities with limited financial resources being more car dependent and have longer travel times to access food”. This is especially the situation in communities where residents suffer financial hardship as well as those marked by low density development, itself a contributor to reliance on private vehicles and to the limited economic viability of public transport.

Integrated into the urban environment, food sensitive urban design promotes health, improved access to fresh food, supports urban livelihoods and economic opportunity in the urban food system, creates a sense of community and participation in the management of public land, furthers urban sustainability and contributes to resilient cities.

“There is increasing evidence that involvement in the provision of food, be it growing, cooking or social eating, can improve healthy eating behaviour, increase opportunities for social engagement and connection to nature and help foster increased self-esteem and a sense of achievement”, summarises the report.

Food sensitive urban design offers a great opportunity for the more innovative in the planning and design professions, for the civic entrepreneurs in local government and for the social entrepreneurs in communities.

Making it happen—advocacy

Food sensitive planning and urban design sounds like a good idea that could open new possibilities in our cities, but how do we make it a reality?

First, say the authors, circulate the Food Sensitive Planning and Urban Design concept document among those whose work could be informed by it. In addition to councils and planners this could include community-based sustainability groups and educators such as those gathered around climate change campaigns, Transition Towns and Permaculture design.

Many of the food-related initiatives of these community groups are piecemeal… a home garden here, a community garden there and a Permablitz that brings people together elsewhere but that offers no ongoing program of participant education and engagement. Food Sensitive Planning and Urban Design, if adopted as a good idea, has the potential to provide the framework through which their efforts are integrated into a greater urban whole. It could scale-up these worthy but individual efforts by positioning them in a broad urban continuum and linking their participants to other community-based, local government and small business/social enterprise initiatives.

Then there’s the option for FSPUD advocates to host workshops and advocate to local government how food sensitive urban design could be integrated into policy and practice. This would include facilitating active transport links with food retail and community food systems such as food cooperatives, community supported agriculture, community gardens and other community self-help initiatives as well as to food retail. Promoting particular projects to local government is good because when it is posible to work constructively with councils projects can move from idea to reality. A  focus on policy advocacy creates opportunity for a greater number of initiatives to happen.

Integration in the planning process

If food sensitive urban design is to influence strategy and policy development in local and state government it will have to become something that is considered at different stages of the planning process. It will need to

influence budgets and to be positioned as a valid consideration when it comes to setting priorities. Thus, FSPUD advocates will need to educate desision makers as to why food issues are an appropriate focus for the planning system. Best impacts, say the authors, will come from having food sensitive urban design enbedded in state planning frameworks. The same could be said for local goverment planning instruments as it is councils that influence the type of development in an area.

“In the face of complex and unpredictable change, FSPUD seeks to support the development of adaptable and responsive settlements and communities”

In enlarging the role of food sensitive urban planning, the paper says: “Well designed integration of food production can help make urban environments more comfortable… eg. by mitigating the urban heat island effect… as well as more enjoyable and safe”.

One way this can be done is to regard community-based food production opportunities on public or private land as ‘placemaking’ initiatives. Placemaking is a planning concept that refers to making public places, such as parks, into safe, family friendly, diverse, innovative and attractive places catering to both traditional park roles such as passive recreation and to new uses such as community gardens.

Opportunities—putting FSUD into practice

Putting FSUD into practice will require the cooperation of  communities and councils and, preferably, state government.

“In the face of complex and unpredictable change, FSPUD seeks to support the development of adaptable and responsive settlements and communities”, says the authors.

Local government can start by identifying and removing barriers. The ease with which water sensitive urban design was accepted by councils suggests food sensitive urban design could likewise become accepted.

But it might not be so easy. There was considable community sentiment in support of water sensitive urban design and the employment by councils of environmental science and environmental management graduates as resource managers and as sustainability educators paved the way internally for acceptance of the concept. Water has been accepted for a longer time as a critical resource and the droughts and urban water restrictions in Australian cities of the first decade of the twenty-first century reinforced its primacy. This legitimised state and local government putting budgets and staff behind water conservation, education and planning.

There is nothing similar by way of tertiary-educated state or local government staff in the area of food to drive an internal agenda, so the adoption of food sensitive urban design by councils would rely to a large extent on environmentally-qualified sustainability educators being familiar with food issues and their links to the common focus areas of sustainability education of energy, water, transport and waste.

Strategies that integrate productive landscapes including fruit and nut trees with other landscape objectives can open the door to new ways of seeing streetscapes

Unlike other countries, Australia has not experienced a food crisis as it has a water crisis. Price increases for grain staples resulting from the food crisis of 2007/08 were absorbed by a bouyant economy and there was sufficient household financial padding such that people could afford to pay a little extra. In other words, affluence insulates communities from an increasingly volatile global food market and does not highlight food as a critical resource to the security of our cities.

Contributing to the illusion of food plenty are well-stocked supermarket shelves. Most shoppers simply don’t realise that there is considerably less than a week’s food on these supermarket shelves, assuming no panic buying. Little stock is held by supermarkets which rely on frequent delivery by trucks from regional distribution centres through the ‘just in time’ system. Natural disasters can easily disrupt this vulnerable system, turning just in time delivery to just too late.

Positioning and validating food security and food sensitive urban design in local and state government, then, may not be as easy as was water sensitive urban design.

Making the link between community development through enabling community-based food systems, ensuring city plans include FSPUD opportunities and that fresh food retail is easily accessible to those without a car goes some way towards creating the conditions for an effective urban food supply chain. Food outlets need to be located where they are connected by public transport, walking and cycling. The problem with the big mall developments in the suburbs, surrounded by huge parking areas, is they encourage car use and local traffic congestion. Buying food becomes a high-carbon-emission activity. This is the realm of retail planning policy. Rather than huge malls isolated in a sea of parked cars, a healthy urbanism requires variety in food retail in easy access to where people live.

There’s also the role of urban fringe councils in using planning laws to reduce the loss of urban fringe farmland to urban development. There may also be need for a ‘right to farm’ policy when it comes to making decisions on complaints by residents in new urban developments about the noise, odour and hours of operation of adjacent farms.

The authors of Food Sensitive Planning and Urban Design, as well as other urban food system advocates propose that councils consider:

• mixing large and small retailers with street frontages
• accessable via active transport (walking, cycling) and by public transport
• favouring fresh food retail rather than fast food takeaways—green grocers, butchers, fishmongers, bakeries with wholesome choices
• eating-out opportunities such as cafes and restaurants to give greater choice than accommodating only fast food outlets
• urban design guidelines that integrate productive landscapes including fruit and nut trees on streets and in parks with other urban landscaping objectives; “Strategies that integrate productive landscapes including fruit and nut trees with other landscape objectives can open the door to new ways of seeing streetscapes… “, the authors state in making the link between public place plantings and productive urban plantings; many councils are yet to be convinced of the multi-purpose values of what we might call edible landscaping, however there are a few that have done so
• housing strategies that increase density and that support the viability of local, smaller food retail outlets
• subdivision guidelines that embody food sensitive urban design, public and private garden space
• public open space and recreational strategies that integrate food opportunities into outdoor spaces, such as community gardens, city farms, farmers markets, cafes etc
• public health plans that have a component of nutritional health linked to the regional food supply chain
• rural land strategies to ensure the continuity of market gardening, orcharding and poultry production at the urban/rural interface and that avoid the loss of farmland to urban development and the conversion of productive agricultural land into unproductive urban lots
• the adoption of council food procurement policies that support regional farmers and food enterprises and that stipulate the purchase of food that has been produced by environmentally and socially ethical methods; we must recognise, however, that a barrier to buying regionally produced foods is the lack of a certification scheme identifying regional production.

How to proceed

Food Sensitive Urban Planning and Design outlines a local government agenda for a year:

1. research an area’s food system to identify the most effective interventions
2. devise new strategies and policies to integrate food sensitive urban design
3. undertake capital works to create and improve assets for the production, preparation, distribution, exchange and celebration of food
4. appoint staff to plan and implement food sensitive urban design.

One or two of these points might take longer than a year, however a year would suffice as a timeframe to make a start. The proposed year program, I believe, might better be used to produce a local government food security policy, given the absence of anything from state government despite lobbying for such by food advocacy groups in the states. Councils have developed – and are developing – such policy, the first believed to be that adopted by South Sydney City Council in 2007 and entitled What’s Eating South Sydney?

A local government food policy would:

• identify demographics at risk of food insecurity
• plan how fresh food retail would be linked to public and active – walking and cycling – transport
• identify and plan for the multiplication of community-based food initiatives such as community and home gardens on the production side, and distribution systems such as food cooperatives and community supported agriculture schemes
• looks at resource recovery of food waste and at increasing the volume of food collected are redistributed by food salvage enterprises
• consider the potential for small scale intensive, commercial food production and the potential for innovative food production technologies such as commercial scale aquaponics as small business or social enterprise opportunites
• introduce internal food procurement policy for council events and services.

A food security policy can be a metapolicy, an umbrella inclusive of council food procurement, community gardens, small business start-up assistance, grants, street tree planting and aspects of social policy.

A powerful start

Food Sensitive Planning and Urban Design is a powerful articulation of a new idea. It is both a document to kick-start the integration of food as an urban resource as critical as water and energy to the sustainability of our cities and it is an exploration of an emerging topic.

Communities and small businesses have already made a start in making our cities more food secure and in realising the social benefits of the community-based approach to doing this. Here and there around Australia brave and innovative councils, too, have seen its relevance and its potential to create opportunity for community building and in reinforcing local food economies.

Most importantly, Food Sensitive Planning and Urban Design is an advocacy document proposing that the time has arrived to incorporate food security and food-related opportunities into the planning profession and into state and local government policy.

• • • • • • • • • • • •

Strategic questions about proposed development

The authors of Food Sensitive Planning and Urban Design suggests a number of strategic questions that state and local government planners could ask about proposed urban development:

1. What is the impact of the proposal on the amount and viability of productive land?

• loss of land could impact future food supply and economy
• can productive capacity be retained within rezoned landuse?
• what are the opportunities to redevelop existing urban areas to produce food? Edible streetscapes, community gardens etc.

2. Are there interface issues between agricultural land and other uses?

• does residential land directly adjoin rural?
• could less sensitive land be used as the interface?
• could stormwater, wastewater etc be used on adjacent agricultural land?

3. How will people access food and the food choices important to them?

• where are nearest sources?
• are these car reliant sources?
• can changes be made for active transport?
• is there space for community gardens, markets etc?

4. Does the area increase positive exposure to food?

• integrate productive space into public places
• establish food-value productive street trees
• food production features that contribute to amenity and opportunities for community participation
• accessibility of public places
• celebration of local food efforts such as verge garden competitions, front garden competitions etc.

5. Does the space encourage development and use of diverse food outlets?

• food exchanges, markets
• are food outlets and community food activities perceived as attractive, safe, friendly?
• opportunities for preparation and sharing of food… community kitchens, BBQs
• shelter in open space for communal meals and family gatherings?

Food shapes cities. The supermarkets and their attendant shopping malls now define how we interact with food. Their stacked shelves of prepared and cooked foods draw thousands of car-bound travellers from far away to their enclosed worlds. Their pulling power suppresses opportunity for smaller traders and contributes to the suburban food deserts where sources of fresh food are non-existent within reasonable travel distance.

What a contrast to the traditional town centre market. The malls are enclosed spaces lacking, from inside, any geographic reference point. Few offer any view of their surroundings, few have a clock to tell the time of day. It could be midday or midnight—these places with their enclosed worlds are time-independent. They’re like those enclosed settlements you see in science fiction movies, habitats isolated from some hostile environment and that offer their own internal, brightly lit, closely managed and controlled social space.

Food production in the city, an increasingly rare sight. Photo: Scarborough Park, Kogarah NSW.

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Carolyn Steel, architect and writer, drew the contrast between traditional market and supermarket at her July appearance at UNSW. She also provided her audience with a little historic perspective on food sysyems, alluding to writings from Classical Greece and describing how Imperial Rome derived its food supply from across the length and breadth of the Mediterranean and from parts of what us now Europe, including getting oysters from England. Rome’s food came from wherever its shipping could reach and, in its own limited way, its was the globalised food supply of its day, drawing its sustenance from all over the known world. Food shaped the Roman world just like it shapes ours.

 only grain crops have the productive capacity to feed urban populations

Earlier cities took the form of self-sustaining city states fed from their immediate hinterland and the harvest was the most important event of the year. Once, livestock was walked into the city market and grain came by river. Then came technological innovation and this, in turn, started to reshape our urban food supply. The railway enabled food to be brought into the city from greater distances, distances beyond the immediate urban hinterland that had traditionally supplied the city. The food supply chain began to diffentiate from its earlier close asocation with people, said Carolyn.

Grain feeds cities

”Grain is the food of cities”, Carolyn emphasised, going on to describe that only grain crops have the productive capacity to feed urban populations.

“We are now moving into an urban age after 10,000 years of urban development”, she explained. This gives rise to the ’urban paradox’—with increasing urbanisation comes increasing distance from our food sources. It’s part of the industrialisation of food, not a new phenomenon but one long underway. This industriaisation favours a limited range of food varieties as these can withstand the rigours of transportation, unlike the more delicate types.

A contemporary aspect of urbanisation is that it deskills the countryside because it attracts rural people to town and city. With the decline of the rural population comes a decline in the number of people with experience in and a knowledge of farming.

Carolyn took the audience through her set of food values: eating, cooking, buying, saving, growing. She described her contemporary food fundamentals: land and soil degradation, climate change and emissions, water, energy, labour. Then she went through the food production cycle from farm to factory, market, kitchen, table, waste… and, ideally, waste-to-farm so as our urban food left-overs fertilise our future meals. She spoke of  ’the civilising power of the meal’… the meal as shared time around one of our basic needs, a type of communion in its own way. It is a theme I recall Australian chef and author, Stephanie Alexander speaking about.

Planning—the right place for food security

“Food has not been part of planning”, Carolyn explained, and this is why food production opportunities are lacking in our suburbs and urban areas.

That, however, seems to be changing. More planners as well as urban agriculture advocates are recognising that the security of urban food supplies, as well as the thousands of livelihoods that are part of it, are a critical planning focus as important as housing, transportation, water and energy. Local government is starting to Carolyrespond by assisting community gardening and farmers’ markets. A sign of this change was the University of Melbourne’s Victorian Eco Innovation Lab and National Heart Foundation’s Food-Sensitive Planning and Urban Design, a conceptual framework for a sustainable and healthy food system, which was aimed at planners and government. It’s likely we will be hearing more on urban food security and planning.

Community action

Having covered history and current trends, Carolyn spoke of the many and varied citizen initiatives in food procurement.

There is limited opportunity to grow food in cities, she acknowledged. However, we have allotments—more commonly known as community gardens in Australia—and we have the experience of the Victory Gardens when public open space was turned into food gardens to increase food security during World War Two. We also have some potential for growing on urban rooftops, she said.

Carolyn went on to mention community-based food procurement other than garden agriculture—food co-ops, community supported agriculture—and the work of food planning advocacies. In this country they would include the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance, Sydney Food Fairness Alliance, Coffs Coast Local Food Alliance  and Sustain Queensland. In the UK, Carolyn may have been familiar with the work of Sustain and other food policy orgnisations that have a much longer history than Australia’s comparative newcomers.

And Carolyn’s advice for people seeking involvement in sny of these initiatives? “Pick any point and get going”.

Carolyn is author of Hungry City-how food shapes our lives. Vintage UK, 2009.

View Carolyn’s TED Talk.

Have you planted too much spinach? Are you inundated by lemons and rosemary? Then bring the along to swap and share with other local gardeners at the Watershed’s Urban Harvest Food Swaps at Marrickville Street Fair on Sunday 23 October 2011 and Newtown Festival on Sunday the 13th November.

The Urban Harvest swap is a chance for community gardeners and backyard growers to come together to celebrate and share the rewards of their activities. If you’re a backyard or community grower please come along and bring excess fresh produce, seeds and seedlings from your backyard or community gardens.  You may even swap a gardening tip or two.

Find the Watershed’s Urban Harvest Food Swap at:

• Marrickville Street Festival in the Marrickville Council tent, Sunday 23 October 2011 between 11:00am – 3:00pm
• Newtown Festival at the Watershed Swap and Eco Zone (near the children’s playground) Sunday 13th November between 10:00am – 12:00pm.

Future swaps could be held at The Watershed or at Addison Road or the Eveleigh markets, at Telstra Square in Newtown or one of the community gardens on a rotating basis.

Regards, Dianne Moy, Program Manager.

Within a month of returning to Sydney I witnessed another exciting move in community food systems—the launch of Sydney Food Connect. At last, it seemed, the idea of community supported agriculture (CSA) was catching on across the nation.

Sydney Food Connect's superb birthday cake... fruit and vegetables tumble from the horn of plenty as they tumble from the fields thanks to the hard work of Food Connect's farmers.

Fast forward a year to late-April 2011 and I find myself on a minor street in Rozelle, a street of industrial buildings quite close to the old coal burner that once fed electricity to the city. That power station lies dormant now, its windows smashed and its monolithic facade a testament to a fading age.

That street is deserted on a Sunday afternoon but follow the music and inside an anonymous industrial building you find festively and celebration. The occasion—the celebration of Sydney Food Connect’s first birthday.

Social business, social outcomes

Food Connect is no ordinary business… it’s what’s called a social business or a social enterprise… a business that has social goals. This gives it a value that run-of-the-mill businesses don’t have, a special social value. Social business uses business methods to achieve worthwhile social goals.

It takes time to establish a small business and Sydney Food Connect is still striving to establish itself as a viable economic entity. The purpose of Food Connect is to make the produce of regional farmers and food processors, such as bakers, available to city people who subscribe to the weekly box of mainly organic, local food. Sure, some foods like avocados and bananas come from further north in NSW, but as organic food entrepreneur, Tsung Xu—one of the people who has assisted Food Connect says—to some extent you have to supply people with what they want and those fruits are not farmed near Sydney.

Unlike other community supported agriculture (CSA) start-ups, Food Connect sources its produce from a larger number of farmers. This provides security of supply and avoids seeing the system collapse when a farmer who is the sole supplier to a CSA decides its time for a career change or to move on. This happened to an earlier CSA in Sydney.

This farming family supplies Sydney Food Connect from their urban fringe market garden.

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When farmer’s produce comes into the Rozelle packing facility a convivial crew divide it into small, medium or large boxes and these are taken by refrigerated truck (to keep it fresh and reduce wilt in Sydney’s summers) to the City Cousin pick-up points throughout the city. There, in the early evening, subscribers collect their boxes of organic, local food and in many City Cousins enjoy a few minutes of conviviality with other subscribers. Some bring their young children—at our Randwick City Cousin, the young boy of a subscriber usually insists of being taken outside to see the ‘windmill’, the wind turbine that spins high above the community centre.

The Sydney Food Connect crew.

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Pure permaculture

Avocado farmer, Sandra Fishwick of Red Plateau Organic Produce on the Comboyne plateau, supplies organically grown avocados to Sydney Food Connect. Comboyne is the closest supply of avocado to Sydney.

From time to time I get disappointed with environmentalists. You would think that they would know that food is a keystone resource and that food choices have a direct impact on the generation of greenhouse gases, on waste going to landfill (where it breaks down to release methane) and on water consumption, and that they would rush to join Food Connect because food procured closer to where it is eaten and that is grown organically reduces these impacts. It’s good that some do this—the Greenpeace office in Ultimo, Sydney, is a City Cousin and that makes a pleasant change to the organisation’s usual hobby of attacking Apple. What’s not good that many environmentalists don’t, either because they have no local City Cousin or they’re happy to shop in the supermarket.

Environmentalist failure to support social business is not new, as the case of EcoForest Ltd showed some years ago. Rather than invest their surplus income in an ecologically-managed forestry operation, they preferred conventional investments.

The argument that permaculture people should support Food Connect is a no-brainer. Food Connect epitomises permaculture founder, Bill Mollison’s statement that it can be better to buy your food from someone who has produced it ethically than to try to grow your own.

Because Food Connect buys from regional farmers (returning up to 40 centre in the dollar to the farmer, in comparison to the supermarket’s five of so cents) it supports Bill’s edict that we should return food production to the city, in this case to the market gardens on the urban-rural interface.

Bill and permaculture co-founder, David Holmgren, also said that permaculture initiatives should be financially viable. And, as a permaculture-influenced enterprise (Julian Lee, founder of Sydney Food Connect, is a graduate of the Permaculture Design Course), that is exactly what Sydney Food Connect is attempting at the moment. Food Connect is precisely the sort of social enterprise the two were talking about.

Music, food and a good time

Social entrepreneur and founder of Sydney Food Connect, Julian Lee.

Old industrial streets in the Inner West take on an empty, forlorn aspect on a quiet Sunday afternoon in mid-Autumn. But everything changed once I walked through that door… here was live music, dancing, the conviviality of the good company of fellow City Cousins, of Food Connect staff and Food Connect subscribers an their children and partners. Here too was more food than could be eaten at the event—the left overs were packaged as take-aways—here were brief and unplanned testimonial speeches and here was the Food Connect’s superb birthday cake.

That cake, I have to say, was more an edible sculpture than a common cake. The cabbage with its veined leaves was a true work of fine art…  culinary art, and the carrots were made of carrot cake, the lemons of lemon cake… it was a case of having to destroy the art work in order to enjoy it and its varied flavours.

So, one year on and Food Connect has built its own social network of City Cousins and city eaters but there remains more to do to increase the number of subscribers and recruit new City Cousins to take this innovative social idea into the suburban heartland.

Food Connect Sydney: http://sydney.foodconnect.com.au/

Food Connect accountant Margaret, on left, presents Lena, now leaving Food Connect, with flowers.

Bondi Food Connect City Cousin, Lance Lieber.

Robert Pekin, from the Food Connect foundation, started Food Connect in Brisbane in 2004.

Fiona Campbell, Randwick's Food Connect City Cousin, has a few words.

Food Connect Foundation's Robert Pekin conspires with Randwick City Cousin, Fiona Campbell.

This guide to edible street verge planting has been pulled together from discussions with local government staff, sustainability educators and street verge gardeners.

FARMING THE FOOTPATH—it’s been going on for some time in our cities but the last few years have brought an upsurge of interest.  It’s one of those ideas that is now capturing the public imagination and we are starting to see more and more street verge gardens, many of them growing food.

Most verge plantings have so far been created by gardeners who know what they are doing, but the recent burst of popularity suggests that a little thought before acting might be a good thing. There is concern in local government, which is responsible for public footpaths, that street verge gardens might be planted to inappropriate species and could interfere with underground services such as water, gas and sewage pipes or block easy access to and from the street. There are design solutions to these reservations.

Established street trees and newer, mixed verge plantings including fruit trees, shrubs and vegetables bring welcome shade to this Chippendale footpath in summer.

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It can be confusing for local government when they are approached by people wanting to make a verge garden or who have already turned their nature strip to citrus and cabbage, nuts or natives. Rather than think how this could be done well, there have been incidents where councils have ordered the removal of verge gardens or removed them themselves.  However, for councils willing to creatively engage with citizens in this new use of public land, a little design thinking can ensure that planted street verges—edible and otherwise—are made to a high standard of safety, access and finish. Where councils decide to go with the flow of public interest and enable street verge plantings, publication of a set of design and planting guidelines can be a great help.

This article introduces current thinking on street verge gardening.

An established practice

Street verge gardening is the practice of growing ornamental, native or edible plants on the footpath. The rise in popularity of edible gardens has brought the planting of fruits, herbs and vegetables, sometimes mixed with flowers and native plants, to our street verges. The practice is another means of returning food production to our cities and is attracting attention and support in professional design circles.

Edible verge gardening in Australian cities can be traced back to the days of mass immigration in the 1950s, especially to immigrants from Mediterranean countries.  Take a walk around the suburbs where the immigrants of that time made their homes and you find the olive trees they planted on the footpaths are now fully grown and laden with fruit in season. In older parts of sydney, the loquat with its bight yellow fruit is occasionally found on footpaths, but more commonly in gardens, however this is not so good a choice as it attracts fruit fly. This is another consideration in selecting fruits for the street verge.

Unknowingly, some councils have made their own contribution to edible streetscapes. Take a walk along a certain street in Stanmore, in Sydney’s Inner West, and you encounter the Australian bush food tree, the Illawarra Plum (Podocarpus elatus). This strange, plum-red fruit with its seed on the outside can be picked and eaten raw or made into a sauce by those with culinary savvy. Walk down a particular street in Windsor, Brisbane, and you encounter another Australian bushfood serving as a verge planting, the macadamia nut. Then there are numerous species of lillypilly, the Syzygiums, that have been established as street trees and that yield edible fruit. Some of these species are to be found in city parks too, a fact not lost on gleaners.

Guerrilla garden on the verge between a car park and a revegetated bushland slope at Clovelly Beach, eastern suburbs Sydney. The garden is off the walkway and is well maintained by local people.

Councils take a proactive approach

Some local governments have taken a procactive approach. Recognising that citizens want to beautify their neighbourhoods and to turn poorly used land, such as the grassy strips along the footpath to productive use, a number of councils have written the opportunity for street verge gardening into policy.

Where a number of households on a street is involved, the City of Sydney covers verge gardening within its Community Garden Policy. In 2011, the City incorporated the Myrtle Street, Chippendale, street verge gardens into its Sustainable Streets Demonstration Project when it decided to support a trial of verge gardening, community composting, Michael Mobbs’ retrofitted sustainable demonstration house and other local initiatives already underway among local people .

The verges of Myrtle Street, which is dominated by two-level Victorian era terrace houses, has been planted to a mix of fruit trees, vegetables, natives and ornamentals. Early 2011 saw local people enjoy their first harvest of green pawpaw which they grated into salad. Parts of adjacent streets have been planted and several espaliered citrus grow along a trellis in Peace Park at the end of Myrtle Street.  The community composting trial in the park is being restarted, monitored and evaluated, a maintenance plan developed and workshops offered to local people in managing the system (see also: http://pacific-edge.info/comm_composting/). The community compost supplies fertiliser to the street verge gardens.

A road end blister planted to a fruiting pawpaw and fruiting shrubs in Myrtle Street, Chippendale. The taller, established street trees provide urban canopy and are supplemented in doing so by the edible understorey.

Other councils have a verge garden approval process that requires gardeners to submit a plan for their garden and levies a charge for considering the proposal.

Council staff and local people may find justification for verge gardening in local government city, environment and urban greening plans. People planning to approach councils for permission to farm their street verge would do well to research these plans and to make the link to them in their application, pointing out how their verge plantings would implement aspects of the planning documents. Linkages might include:

The verge garden at Perth City farm includes a diverse array of species and, with the funky City Farm fence with its grape vine and other foliage, creates a pleasant streetscape.

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Food security and council planting policy

The global food price rises of recent years, the food crisis of 2007-2008 and recent natural disasters have highlighted the value of cities retaining a high food production capacity on their rural fringe and within the suburbs. Community food gardens are a response to this as would be edible street verges though the volume of food that verges could produce is limited.

Urban agriculture and food security advocates now propose that those councils that have urban greening plans for the establishment of street trees consider fruit and nut trees as part of those plans. Nut and edible fruit species as street and park trees would provide the same environmental services as other street trees, including native species, in terms of shading, biodiversity, air filtration and visual amenity but, unlike commonly planted street and park trees, they also provide an edible yield.

These people are not suggesting mass planting of edible species all over the city, as councils seldom have horticultural staff to maintain the plantings, management for which would rely on community organistions. They propose that where there is support that edibles be established as street trees and shrubs. An example is the citrus planted between eucalypts on the street verge adjacent to Glandore Community Centre in Adelaide, the Myrtle Street plantings in inner Sydney and the community nut trees established in Totnes in the UK. In Adelaide, the citrus provide an understorey to the taller eucalypts in a linear mimicry of the natural forest. The association of both species provides a pleasant and productive streetscape and contributes to a varied urban canopy.

In Glandore, Adelaide, a verge orchard of citrus has been planted between tall, mature eucalypts.

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Food security policy is being considered by few local governments in Australia at present although South Sydney City Council introduced what is believed to be Australia’s first in 1997 and the City of Maryibyrnong in Victoria has produced a policy. Although only limited amounts of food could be produced on the verge, it has the potential to form a supplement to family diets.

The beneficial functions of verge gardens

Let’s turn now to the functions of kerbside gardens. Functions describe the indirect benefits of the plantings. They do not refer to their direct value of the plantings to people, such as their yield of food.

A visitor to the Myrtle Street verge gardens in Chippendale inspects a young citrus tree.

The critical question here is this: How can we maintain and increase, where appropriate, the beneficial functions of our verge planting?

Function 1: Provision of environmental services

Like any ecosystem, that of an edible plant association established in a verge garden provides the environmental services commonly associated with plants:

This requires establishing a diversity of plant types.

Funciton 2: Making productive use of urban land

Kerbside gardening makes productive use of land in the city. It puts to practical use small patches of land that are otherwise neglected or planted to simplified plant communities—such as lawn verges—that are unproductive or that may consume excessive water and fossil fuels in their maintenance. This is an important point for councils seeking to reduce their carbon footprint and verge gardens offer a ready solution where there is interest in creating them.

Edible kerbside plantings value urban land more than alternative uses because they are multifunctional.

Local resident and City of Sydney Sustainable streets project participant, Micheal Mobbs, inspects a citrus tree growing in the street verge garden in Chippendale.

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Function 3: Boosting biodiversity

As mixed edible plantings, verge gardens attract insects and other small animal species that interact through food webs. This is the basis of their biodiversity value. Flowering species attract bees, providing habitat for pollinators in the city.

Biodiversity functions can be enhanced where open pollinated, non-hybrid vegetable and herb species or rare varieties of fruit tree are established. These can become a seed source for distribution to other gardeners, spreading the availability of species that make up our agricultural biodiversity, a type of biodiversity as threatened as that of native species, if not more so.

The gardens can contribute to the preservation of the biodiversity of non-edible species such as local native or heritage exotic plants where these are included in plantings. Verge gardens can blend edibles, natives and exotics.

Function 4: New ways to engage with public space

A further function of kerbside plantings is less to do with plants and more to do with people. It is this: taking responsibility for a kerbside garden provides a new means for people to engage with public space. It is a means of assuming greater responsibility for a neighbourhood and encourages the role of ‘engaged citizen’.

Public space is often viewed as the sole responsibility of local government. Citizens make minimal use of the space and often feel no responsibility for its care even though some councils expect people to mow the verge on their property boundary. Thus, local government adopts a managerial attitude as a service provider and sees little potential for a public role in open space management. Engaging with the interested public in working out how to make verge gardens work well provides a more modern and participatory approach.

It is in this sense that the gardens enhance citizen and community engagement with public lands. Local government might choose to see this as developing the capacity of communities to take a more proactive role in public space management.

A verge container garden occupies the narrow ledge of a lane in Darlinghurst in a community project facilitated by the City of Sydney. Vegetables are planted in the plastic containers and citrus and olive trees are espaliered along a trellis attached to the wall of the building.

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The bright green of sweet potato in the Myrtle Street verge gardens.

Function 5: Enhancing urban amenity

Urban amenity is the deriving of often intangible benefits from the built environment.

Kerbside food production increases the amenity of urban areas through the provision of:

Understanding council concerns

Street verge gardens are often spontaneous installations constructed without the approval of local government and often without the knowledge that councils might require notification of a proposal to plant the footpath and that their approval may be needed.

Advocates of the edible planting of public space would do well to understand the concerns of councils, for whom it can come down to a question of public safety and council liability for accidents. Councils, after all, are responsible for plantings in public places and for footpaths.

Fruitfall

Discussing the topic of verge planting, a council officer mentioned the potential issue of fruit falling from trees onto parked cars, or of pedestrians slipping on fruit left lying on the footpath and injuring themselves.

This, of course, is already a risk with the seed pods, ornamental fruit and heavy, seasonal leaf fall of some ornamental street trees. Whether what falls from street trees is edible or not doesn’t change the risk much at all and it remains a consideration.

The question of maintaining and harvesting

Someone working in the parks section of a western Sydney council said that he is not opposed to planting edible street trees, the question is who maintains them? His suggestion was that councils could plant edible trees were they requested to do so by a community group prepared to care for and harvest them. He pointed out that most council grounds staff have no training in the maintenance of fruit and nut trees or skills such as pruning, pest management and harvesting.

The best solution is to glean the fruit and nuts before they fall. Gleaners are already at work in our cities with some harvesting unwanted fruit for exchange at food swaps, such as Melbourne’s and Adelaide’s Urban Orchard. There is also potential for community organisations such as rare fruit enthusiasts and community permaculture associations to take on the voluntary jobs of maintaining the trees and collecting the harvest. Of course, as plantings on public land, anyone can harvest from edible street verge trees.

What about abandoned gardens?

The potential for gardeners to abandon their verge plantings is something that plays on council minds. What happens when the householder moves home, more than one council staffer has asked?

It’s a reasonable question because there is no guarantee that the new occupant will be interested in maintaining the verge garden. One solution would be for the departing resident to return the verge to lawn, and this is a solution favoured by some council staff.

The question refers only to verge gardens established by individual householders on the footpath immediately outside their property boundary. Where the verge garden is a community garden maintained by a team of local people the question is less relevant because such verge gardens are maintained collectively.

The realities of verge gardens

There are a few things the would-be verge cultivator might contemplate before turning the footpath turf. The items that follow are all drawn from experience and are worth thinking about.

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A Fremantle street verge garden, one of many along the street, is planted to lettuce and other plants irrigated by a microspray hose connected to a tap at the Painted Fish guesthouse behind. The young jacarandas in the verge garden will cast a welcoming shade over the footpath when grown.

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Reality 1: Road verges are on public land and produce might be taken

A gardener in Sydney’s inner west who has long maintained an edible verge of low-maintenance vegetables, herbs and a solitary, dwarf orange tree watched over the months its one and only piece of fruit turned from green to bright orange… and then disappear.

That didn’t faze her—she had expected it and was prepared to share her abundant verge that otherwise would support only a biologically un-diverse monoculture of lawn. What the incident demonstrates is the reality that the street verge cultivator has no control over people seeing the produce as public property and has no property rights to what is grown on the verge. The verge is accessible to anyone and nothing can be enforced to stop the public helping themselves to what is grown there. The verge might be thought of as an extension of the home garden in planting terms, however it is not an extension of the home garden in legal terms because it is on public land.

Most verge gardeners are happy to share what they grow and expect that people will take some. Perhaps a little sign suggesting people take edible leaves or fruit when ripe but not pick the entire plant would go some way to minimising damage.

Some street verge gardeners regard their plantings as ‘forage gardens’ where people are free to take some of what is growing. In cases like this the street verge garden is regarded as edible landscaping.

Reality 2: Neighbours and passers-by may complain

Not everyone will like your turning footpath lawn into footpath food. They may complain to council about the presence of the garden or parts of it. Often, this stems from the shock of the new, the unorthodoxy of putting street verges to productive use.

One case I know of was a complaint about the clumping grass, Lomandra, overhanging a Sydney Inner West footpath. The householder was told by council to remove the plant. Yet, in Manly where I used to live, a householder had planted the verge to the native Malaleuca (tea tree) and some of the branches protruded at head height and blocked access to parked vehicles. It is a wonder that nobody complained about that. It would have been a proactive move to prune the offending branches.

Then there is the problem of the personal sense of aesthetics. What is a beautiful vergeside food garden to some is something inappropriate to others. Aesthetics, of course, is no basis for local government decisions on verge gardens because aesthetics allows no objective measure, however councils have to respond to complaints and they often lack any formal means by which people can appeal a decision, potentially putting those whose verge gardens are complained about at a disadvantage.

Reality 3: You verge garden may be vandalised

This I experienced while living down by Botany Bay in Sydney’s southern suburbs. We had planted the area around the malaleuca street tree—it was a council planter that protruded into the roadway—with hardy herbs and a pineapple. Later rather than sooner, the pineapple started to fruit and this we watched as it got bigger and bigger… until, that is, a young boy with a cricket bat thought the pineapple fruit would make a fine cricket ball.

The theft of young fruit trees is something that occurs in community gardens and it happens in verge gardens too. Young fruit trees have disappeared from the Myrtle Street verge gardens.

Uncommon it might be, the possibility of vandalism is something verge gardeners have to live with.

Reality 4: Streets are dangerous places

Managing a verge garden could involve stepping out onto the street to access your planting. There are clear dangers here, especially if you are working with traffic-unaware children.

This is the sort of thing that arouses the interest of council occupational health and safety officers and although the risk of being hit by a vehicle may be small (most adults are traffic-aware and take care crossing the street) it is none-the-less a low level risk that should be kept in mind.

Design considerations for verge gardens

Diagram of a street verge planting showing proposed features.

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1. Not all street verges may be suitable

Like any garden, construction of a verge garden requires an initial site analysis to check that the plants would receive sufficient sunlight, not be damaged by strong, cold winter winds or the hot, desiccating winds of summer and whether soils would require improving by loosening and the addition of compost.

A necessary part of site analysis for street verge gardens is to assess drainage from the street and whether this would affect the garden by bringing in excessive loads of hydrocarbon contamination from spilled oil and other sources.

Testing for lead levels in the soil would be a good idea, as decades of leaded petrol use may have left excessive loads in the soil of older suburbs although lead has long ceased to be used in petrol in Australia. Lead accumulates in the body and can affect mental functioning.

Where these contaminants would present a difficulty for verge gardening, a container garden at least 500cm in height might be a solution for vegetable and herb cultivation and the growing of dwarf fruit trees as this would isolate their roots from the contaminated soil.

2. Design for pedestrian safety

Attractive and cared for certainly, but still too low and a trip hazard according to some councils.

One of the challenges that even supportive councils can be presented with is where street verge gardeners erect a low edge around their gardens. This can be a trip hazard and a potential source of injury claims against council. This type of edging is commonly made with timber boards or a single course of bricks to raise the garden above footpath level.

There may also be an administrative difficulty as a raised garden, even one raised a few centimetres above ground level by a low edge, may constitute a construction on public land and that could require planning permission.

The solution might be not to raise street verge gardens and leave them without an edge. This, however, leaves them open to grass invasion and the washing of mulch and the erosion of soil into the storm water drain during rainy periods. This could be seen happening in a verge garden adjacent to a block of apartments on Gordon Avenue in Coogee where the bark chip was washed over the footpath and into the drain by rain runoff.

How do verge gardeners work around the issues of trip hazard and erosion of mulch and soil?

The example comes from Marrickville gardeners in inner urban Sydney whose garden serves as an example of thoughtful, good design.

The planter with bamboo growing from it opposite the street verge garden is not such a good idea. People with limited sight often use the balcony railings and buildings along property boundary as a guide to walking. Planters palced like this and others attached to balustrade railings and projecting over the footpath can be an impediment.y

3. Design for access to and from vehicles and the street

A verge garden that abuts the gutter may impede people getting into and out of their vehicles.

The need here is for sufficient space so that people:

This narrow stepping stone access to the street has been informally widened to the recommended minimun 1m width.

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This is even more of an important consideration where those are aged people who cannot nimbly step around plantings or people who use a walking aid.

This is accomplished by:

4. Think before you dig

If you make a street verge garden above buried pipes or cables, what might happen when the utility company needs to service them?  Your verge garden will go in the excavation of the trench to access the buried service.

Where there are buried services a solution might be to make a container garden high enough to be above trip hazard height to, perhaps, a minimum 500cm; designed well, these might be movable by a lifting vehicle so as the underground services can be accessed.

When planning a street verge garden, check to see if there are any underground services.

Find out about underground pipes and cables: Dial Before You Dig is a free, online information service on underground pipes and cables anywhere in Australia— http://www.1100.com.au Phone: 1100 during business hours.

Fruit trees and vegetables thrive n this street verge garden in a rural Victorian town.

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5. Select species carefully

Herbs, vegetables and shrub fruits (such as berry fruits) are not the species in question here because of their low growth form and smaller root systems. Rather, it is trees that must be thoughtfully selected for kerbside planting, such as the fruits and nuts.

As well as horticultural considerations such as planting species that are suited to climate, the selection of edible fruit or nut trees should avoid those that:

It’s best to avoid planting thorny species on the verge. These could lead to complaints to council were someone to take objection to being pricked by a sharp thorn. This includes roses, thorny fruit trees and cactus.

6. Prune plants so that their foliage does not overhang the footpath

Here, what is suggested is the selection of appropriate plants and the pruning of those plants so that their branches and foliage so not protrude over the footpath at head height or below. Trees branching higher overhead may be useful for casting shade onto the walkway in the heat of summer.

As the trees grow, gardeners can prune the lower branches that could intrude over the footpath or road. This can be done while the trees are young so as to ‘lift’ the canopy and encourage branching higher above the ground.

Remember that parents push strollers carrying young children along the footpath and children ride scooters and bicycles along it. The last thing they want, quite reasonably, is for their children to by brushed in the face by overhanging foliage.

Overhanging and protruding foliage may also be a deterrent to aged people, especially those using walking aids.

7. The need for care and maintenance

Gardeners of public land such as street verges have a duty of care in maintaining their plantings so that they are safe, look good and do not become vectors for the spread of fruit, vegetable and other plant pests. They must maintain their plantings. Herbs and vegetables, fruits and nuts planted on the kerbside need as much care as those grown in a home gardens.

Care for kerbside planting includes:

8. Think about aesthetics

Irrespective of the gardener’s attitude to aesthetics, verge gardens should look good. Gardens thought to look bad or untidy are likely generate complaints to council.

Concern about neatness and appearance, in some cases over-concern, is a social reality. It’s true that people project their personal sense of aesthetics onto others, however this is something verge gardeners have to live with. What is riskier is the likelyhood that council, if it intervenes, will have no objective criteria to assess aesthetics.

9. Start small, grow incrementally

Where you have a large area of verge, do not attempt to plant the entire area unless you are confident you can keep the entire garden planted and maintained.

Better to start small, consolidate the area you start in then move on in small steps, consolidating as you go. This way, through fully consolidating what you do in your small steps, you reduce maintenance needs because things have been done properly.

Taking a measured pace allows us to use observation to assess what is working or nor working as we go and to make timely adjustments.

The minimal plantings of this verge garden makes it somewhat unproductive. Better to garden only a small area well than a larger area poorly. Consider the time the gardeners will have available to garden at the planning stage.

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A model verge garden

A raised verge garden been built by householders in Marrickville demonstrates the value of thoughtful design.

The garden demonstrates recommended design criteria:

Diagram of the Marrickville street verge garden showing offset and access to street.

The Marrickville raised verge garden showing the offset from the footpath to the streetside edge of the garden and space left at either end of the bed for access to the street.

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Edible rain gardens – potential?

Local government constructs rain gardens to infiltrate storm water into the soil, irrigate street trees and other plantings and to filter pollutants from urban runoff before the water flows through the stormwater system and back into streams or into the ocean.

Rain gardens are found on street verges. Because the plants established in the gardens have to endure periods of moisture without suffering damage as well as long periods of dry soil, hardy native species adapted to local climatic conditions are usually planted. Rain gardens are connected to the storm water drain as a way to deal with excess water during prolonged rainy periods when soils may become waterlogged.

Streetside rain gardens are often unsuited to planting to edible species because of the hydrocarbon and other pollutants washed into them from the street. The design principles of rain gardens, however, might be adapted to verge gardens growing edible and other species. A verge garden in Marrickville, built by local people, intercepts stormwater from adjacent houses for irrigation, and the Myrtle Street gardens do something similar. What is important in the design of this type of garden is to provide an outlet to the stormwater drain from the garden so that excess water has somewhere to flow to.

Rain gardens can be made as raised planters or be built in-ground. Depth is variable and is influenced by soil conditions, the space available, the presence of underground services and drainage of excess water into the storm water system.

Already a reality

Councils are not about to be over run with demands for kerbside gardens. They remain the province of the few enthusiasts. However, if present indications are correct and there is a growing interest in taking over the footpath nature strip to grow food and other plants, then the time may come when local government and community associations publish design and planting guidelines.

The sooner this happens, the better.

In summary

If you plan to retrofit the street verge as a community garden, be sure to consult widely along the street.

Expect some opposition as not all will want to see the street verge turned into garden. Avoid gardening the footpath outside the residences of those not interested.

Check with your council to see if it has any policy on verge gardening.

Find out if services such as sewage or water pipes, gas, electricity etc are located below the street verge. It may be best to avoid planting high value fruit or nut trees if there are services below as, some time, the verge (and your verge garden) may have to be excavated to do maintenance on the services.

In choosing plants, avoid :

Avoid raising low edges around verge gardens as they may become trip hazards. Use pruned, close planted, wiry shrubs such as rosemary to form living edges but do not allow the foliage to overhand the walkway. It may be better to make a raised verge garden at least 50cm in height rather than make low edges around a ground level verge garden.

Do not build up verge gardens around the trunks of street trees. This can introduce disease to the trees and weaken them. Better to make a verge garden between street trees and allow access to the street between the end of the verge garden and the street trees.

Council tree managers do not like people making raised gardens around the trunks of street trees because of the risk of weakening the trunk with disease invasion. Most of the verge gardens in the photo are separate from the tree trunks. The use of old vehicle types might be seen as tacky or an imaginative reuse of waste, depending on your sense of aesthetics.

Plan for access to and from the street by aged people, those with walking aids and disabled people in wheelchairs by leaving a minimum 1m either end of the verge garden bed. In inner urban areas with narrow footpaths and narrow property boundaries, such access at only one end of the bed should be enough. Access to the street should be flat and smooth and, possibly, paved. This is becoming more important with our ageing population.

Offset the outer edge of the verge bed at least 600mm inward from the gutter so that people can open car doors and get into and out of vehicles easily. This might not leave much garden space where footpaths are narrow.

Maintain your verge garden as you would any other edible species garden. Water regularly, especially when plants are young and in the summer months. Add compost regularly to nourish the plants. Add mulch to reduce moisture loss by evaporation and to break down into organic matter to feed the plans.

If you plant fruit trees, anticipate theft. This already happens in community gardens. Grafted fruit trees are expensive and continued theft can de-motivate verge gardeners. If theft is persistent, consider anchoring the young fruit trees to some heavy, buried, difficult to move object with stainless steel cable such as is used to secure bicycles. Remember to loosen as needed to allow unrestricted trunk growth. Alternatively, grow low value trees such as pawpaw, tamarillo or babaco, according to climate.

If you have permission to divert stormwater through the garden as irrigation, ensure that excess water can flow into the stormwater drain. Once garden soils reach field capacity (full saturation), excess moisture, especially during rainy periods, will need somewhere to flow to. Otherwise, erosion, local flooding and other difficulties might occur.

If your verge garden is likely to be inundated by rainwater runoff from a busy street, such as where it is downslope of the road, consider the pollution effect on what you grow of runoff contaminated with hydrocarbons from oil on the road.

Clarification: The author is on the project control group for the Sustainable Streets Demonstration Project at City of Sydney and is the City’s community gardens and Lsndcare coordinator.

View photos of street verge gardens:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=345569&id=46128279174&fbid=10150170508979175

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=336673&id=46128279174

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This is how they do verge gardens in Goodwood, Adelaide. A grape vine is planted into the footpath and trained along a wire below the awnings.

Citizens, community organisations, small farmers, food advocacy and eduction organisations, heath interests, small business and social enterprise working in food production, distribution and waste management have a new voice in Australia now that the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA) has taken steps to set itself up as a formal agency.

AFSA started life immediately prior to the last federal election in reaction to the federal government proposal to develop a national food policy. With the potential for such a policy to influence the types of food people eat, their quality and origin, a letter was sent to the minister proposing representation on any food policy board for small business, small farmer and community organisations. This produced a response by the then-minister suggesting that such opportunity would come in any consultative process regarding the proposed policy and policy team. AFSA is concerned that any such team set up by the government will include only agribusiness interests.

Last Thursday’s meeting, held at Randwick Community Centre thanks to access to facilities being made available by Randwick City Council, brought people from Sydney, the Hunter region, northern NSW, Central West NSW, the ACT, Brisbane and Melbourne. Some from Adelaide who were interested in attending could not make it as was the situation of others from Melbourne. Facilitation was by a participant from the University of Sydney.

Proceedings were notable for their smoothness and the collaboration of diverse interests including small food businesses, sustainability and permaculture education, a couple from local government, a couple from the GMO lobby, farming, academia, the church and social enterprise working in food distribution. Considerable advocacy skill is present in the group, with some having decades of experience in this area.

Ryall Gorden from Nourishing Newcastle.

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What came out of the day was a direction and set of tasks to enact it. A Skype meeting is planned, as is a national convergence themed around food sovereignty.

This is a positive development that has the potential to bring together all of the interests mentioned above.

Lunch and morning/afternoon teas were by O Organics.

Robert Pekin and Emma-Kate Rose from Food Connect Foundation in Brisbane.

Nick Rose from northern NSW documents ideas.

Dr Stuart Hill, who started the social ecology course.