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.

a

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.

The event? None other than an appearance by that animated telegardener, Costa (SBS Costa’s Gardening Oddyssey). The day? At Saturday afternoon at the end of October 2010. The topic? Growing in small spaces, a relevant topic considering the limited growing spaces in our inner urban areas. The venue? Top floor of Waterloo Library. To get into the event, attendees had to walk past the fruit and vege display set up by the folk from Alexandra Park Community Garden, one of the 15 community gardens in the City of Sydney area.

Megan, Sarah, Costa and Russ

a

Costa gives away vegetable seedlings

City of Sydney sustainability events organiser, Megan  Craig, not only planned the event but opened the afternoon and made people feel welcome. Russ Grayson, who provides support to the City’s community gardens and community food initiatives and the policies that enabled them, had a few words about what was happening on those topics in the city and their link to Sustainable Sydney 2030, the long range city plan. The City’s waste projects coordinator, Sarah van Erp, provided invaluable backup support in her usual quiet and competent way.

Then it was over to Costa who told stories, gave away vegetable seedlings and demonstrated how to make a no-dig garden on the library’s floor (on a piece of cardboard, not the carpet, fortunately) and encouraged the audience to support the council.

Costa got across the message about urban food security and growing food and other plants in the city in an entertaining way, a sign of an effective communicator. This, his second appearance at the library on the theme, took the message that sustainability can be grown at home, in community gardens and public places to an audience likely to act on what they heard.

IT WAS ON A SUNNY SATURDAY MORNING

It was also the day that the garden team acquitted their Matching Grant from the City of Sydney. The City provides the grants as start-up capital to community gardens and other community initiatives. There to acknowledge that was Ashley Heath, who administers Matching Grants for the City of Sydney, and her predecessor in the role, Lynn Welch.

Also invited by the gardeners was City of Sydney CEO, Monica Barone, who in her speech emphasised how the community garden was a local element in the Sustainable Sydney 2030 plan, the City’s blueprint for the next 30 years. The same could be said for all of the City’s community gardens and the civic engagement that comes with them. a

Monica spoke about the value of community initiatives to the City and urban contexts such as the income gap and other sociological matters related to living in Australia’s global city.

Celebration is important to community gardeners and to all community-initiatied projects, especially those that create places in our cities where families and individuals can gather and cooperate in some common project. And the James Street Reserve C0mmunity Garden has much to celebrate, having repurposed under-utilised city land for a productive garden where both food and social relationships are gardened.

The current edition of House and Garden magazine was provided to all at the dinner. It featured photos of the community garden and is just the latest in what has been quite a lot of media coverage. The day after the garden’s first birthday dinner, the James Street garden appeared on television. In the garden, the crew have also adopted an educational role, hosting visits by groups intetested in starting their own gardens, tours for local government staff and overseas visitors engaged in urban agriculture.

From right... Janet Verden (community garden team), Lynn Welch, Monica Barone (CEO, City of Sydney), Ashley Heath (grants manager, City of Sydney), Russ Grayson (community gardens, Landcare coordinator City of Sydney).

Some of the James Street Reserve Community Garden crew at the birthday celebration.

FORTUNATELY, THE SUN WAS SHINING in Sydney when two overseas visitors enjoyed a stopover before flying back to Canada. Fortunately, that is, because they had just flown up from Melbourne the day before where their visit to CERES took place under the grey skies and chill winds of that bewintered city.

(from left): Nathaniel and Bert von Einseidel and Russ Grayson at Randwick Sustainability Hub.

a

Could I help with creating a rooftop garden on level four, the email asked? Well, sure, what’s the idea?

The idea was to put a small food garden on the terrace outside the meeting room at Town Hall House. The team behind the idea had the go ahead and now they wanted to get things started.

A few of the workshop crew dressed in their gardening clothes. Trainer, Steve Batley, at left.

a

First was a meeting to explore the idea and how staff might use such a space. I showed photos of community gardens in the City of Sydney local government area and we decided to get access to do a tour of some of the gardens in the City’s minibus. That fed ideas into the mix and the decision was made of go ahead.

Next up was producing a plan of management – this group wanted to do things properly and get their governance structure in place before starting construction. This is always a good idea – working out how you will made decisions, organise yourself and resolve disagreement before you start the physical work. We made use of the Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network’s Plan of Management template which has been adopted by a number of community gardens to help themselves get organised. Roles were agreed upon and a training program devised because many of those participating had no experience of growing plants.

Steve Batley demonstrated the making of compost at a workshop for would-be rooftop gardeners.

Steve Batley’s Sydney Organic Gardens was engaged to do the training. Steve is a qualified landscape architect and has built up a body of experience working with local government, making him the most experienced landscape design and training business in Sydney when it comes to community gardens. The basics of growing in containers formed the core of Steve’s training.
Rooftop assessment a necessityBefore the project got this far, an assessment of the rooftop was made. This is the preliminary assessment made when I am asked to look at rooftops being considered for garden sites. Criteria include the structural strength of the roof, drainage, wind exposure and sun and shade patterns. Rooftops can be windy places and the generality is that the higher the roof the more exposed it is to wind effects. Careful siting of gardens and the erection of wind barriers can resolve wind problems to some extent but can incur extra costs if structural work is involved.

Runoff from garden irrigation has to flow somewhere, preferably into the existing storm water drainage, and pooling on the rooftop avoided. Plants, especially fruit and vegetables, need at least five hours exposure to sunlight daily to grow strong and healthy and fortunately the rooftop garden has a northerly exposure – it can get quite hot up there, something that will necessitate attention to watering, especially in summer.

Wind and sun/shade patterns were detailed in the site analysis workshop and, being an office building, the roof was more than adequately strong to support a garden. There already are a couple gardens on the terrace equipped with a pink flowering frangipani each.
Site analysisIt was hot up there the sunny autumn day the site analysis workshop took place. Steve and I took the team through the elements of site analysis – sun and shade patterns, wind direction/strengths/seasonality/direction,the presence of services such as water/power etc, the presence of wildlife, drainage and the rest. Being a rooftop, there are drains where the garden will be built. All of this information was documented on a site analysis plan drawn up on A2 size paper as the work progressed.

Earlier, Steve had the team draw up a wish list of what they would like on site. Working in small groups they flicked through picture books of gardens and listed what they ought would be good to have.

A workshop participant does the right thing with food waste.

Steve also took the team through the process of making compost – what goes in, how to manage the sealed rotary bin and so on. Open compost or the plastic, domestic compost bins cannot be used here as the adjacent room is used as a public venue.
The ideas phase and site analysis done, future workshops will take the team into the construction phase.

Sooner rather than later, people attending meetings in the room will be able to look out onto the terrace to see cascading vegetables, bright flowers and small fruit trees in pots. It will give an entirely new look to a town hall.

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.

a

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.

a

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.

a

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.

a

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.

a

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.

a

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.

a

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.

a

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.

a

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.

a

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.

a

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.

a

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

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=336690&id=46128279174

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.

a
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.