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.

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

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.

The Sydney Food Fairness Alliance will present its case for an integrated food policy at a special presentation on Thursday September 23 at NSW Parliament House.

The event will be hosted by Macarthur region MPs Philip Costa, Geoff Corrigan, Andrew McDonald and Graham West. The keynote speaker will be David Mason, an expert on urban agriculture.

SFFA spokesperson Jill Finnane says: “After years of lobbying, the issue of the security of Sydney’s food supply is now firmly on the public agenda. Driven by community concerns about poor nutrition choices, loss of prime agricultural land to development, climate change and industrial-scale farming, we are starting to see a significant shift in the thinking of city councils and governments, especially in Europe and north America—towards developing a comprehensive food policy in broad consultation with the community, government and business.”

The presentation will focus on:

• the value of developing an integrated food policy for NSW
• the establishment of a food policy council to develop such a policy
• how to respond to growing community concern about the future of food production and access to food in NSW

Ms Finnane, who is Eco-Justice Coordinator at the Edmund Rice Centre, welcomed a recent scoping study by the NSW Department of Primary Industry which estimated that with its current population growth, Sydney would need 8000ha of arable land to provide half of its vegetable supply.

“The SFFA believes that an independent food council is the best way to engage people to deal with the challenges we face in ensuring a reliable long-term food supply—challenges that include the rising cost of obesity and related chronic diseases, the impact of climate change and the increasing cost of transporting food for long distances.”

Victoria is the only state government to have proposals for a whole of government food policy—there is no formal, comprehensive national food policy for Australia.

A Federal Senate inquiry into food production (Agricultural and Related Industries) released a final report last month and is proposing to continue into the new Parliament to investigate food production in more detail.

For more information on the SFFA and the case for a NSW food policy, visit: www.sydneyfoodfairness.org.au. Resources include a discussion paper, Why do we need a food policy?

A Food Policy Council would provide a forum for:

• rigorous analysis of food issues
• developing innovative responses
• scenario planning for the future of food
• stimulating leadership in addressing the dilemmas ahead
• advocating policy changes
• networking between different parts of the food system
• educating all sections of the community
• building up a broad base of support for implementing changes to the food system.

Sydney Food Fairness Alliance special presentation

Thursday, September 23, Theatrette, NSW Parliament House, Macquarie St, Sydney.

11.30am-12pm followed by light refreshments

To interview Jill Finnane, contact 0417 237 572.

Difference to the supermarket is no longer a point of difference for organics because the industry helps stock those same supermarkets that organic buyers have sometimes been critical of. Organics in the supermarket, however, is a good idea because it makes the food available to more people, though I was recently told of a supermarket removing organic lines because they didn’t earn their shelf space in economic terms.

But back to packaging. What’s made me write about it and organics? A visit to a small food store that stocks a lot of organc lines near where I live, is what. Needing some oats and grain flakes to make my morng muesli, I walked in and found the cereals on offer… three or four certified organic cereals… from the USA… no value for these for Australian farmers, so I skip them. A packet of Kellog’s cornflakes with an ‘Australian made’ label… at least their purchase would support our farmers, if the label means what it appears to.

On my way out of the shop I noticed some firm looking Pink Lady apples… organic, so the sign said. But I didn’t need the sign to tell me that they were organic. The huge sticker plastered on each and every apple more then adequately told me that.

Now, stickers on apples is unfortunately comon these days but these organic apples had the largest stickers I have ever seen disfiguring a piece of fruit… they were huge. My question was this: why? Why does the industry find it necessary to market its products by sticking a big, colourful sticker on every apple that the buyer then has to peel off and discard? I know it’s a little thing, but why does an industry that constantly makes claim to its environmental benefit have then to show that it cares so little about the environmental costs of waste that it forces the customer to pass into the waste stream the excess packaging, those stickers, that it deems so necessary to its marketing? Sure, those stickers identified an organic product, its oint of difference, but they also highlighted a point of sameness — waste creation.

That wasn’t the end of it. Seeking one of those items that you usually can’t buy in an organic supplier, I walked into the supermarket and, as usual, cast an enquiring eye over the fresh produce. And what did I find? Organic kiwifruit, and non-organic kiwifruit. How did they stack up in terms of packaging? Well, the organic line won out again for its excessive packaging. Where the non-organic was offered in a net, the organic was packaged six to a plastic box.

Here’s my point. These incidents are minor but they are also indicators of a problem the organic industry has. It has two problems, actually, and both are barriers but in different ways. The cost of organics puts it out of reach of many shoppers and the perception and expectation of higher cost puts it out of the purchasing intention of many who can afford it. This I have seen.

The other barrier to organics is excess packaging, like those kiwifruit in the supermarket. That deters the many in our cities who know the financial and environmental cost of our waste stream, espcially food packaging waste.

When will the organics industry think seriously about the packaging problem it has in the eyes of many who are its natural customer base? There are options — the greater use of recyclable packaging or the use of no packaging at all, such as how those organic kiwifruit could have been sold.

I consider myself fortunate as I have to buy less and less from either supermarkets or specialist food stores. As  Food Connect City Cousin (City Cousins operate the Food Connect weekly distribution points for the community supported agriculture enterprise) the organic (certified and uncertified provided as ‘chemical free’) foods I get come unwrapped, without stickers and packaged is a cardboard box that is returned for reuse.

Please help us to save the Liverpool Plains. We have our new petition available to sign online. Send the link around to get as many signatures as possible.

The Liverpool Plains is an extremely important foodbowl of Australia — reliably producing crops yielding 40 percent above the national average. It is also in the Namoi Catchment which is an important catchment area for the ailing Murray-Darling Basin. At the moment it is being explored for coal and coal seam gas.

If you care for your supplies of fresh local food and the health of the Murray-Darling Basin and subsequently the Great Artesian Basin please sign this petition. This is very important for all of us and particularly future generations.  Please pass it on to at least five of your friends and ask them to pass it on.  If you would like to know more, please look us up on www.ccag.org.au

http://www.petitiononline.com/CCAGNSW/petition.html

Thank you all so much.
Kind Regards
Rosemary Nankivell
Chairperson of Coal Seam Gas Committee
Caroona Coal Action Group
0428 643284

The talk, held in the seminar room of DLA Phillip Fox on level 38 of a CBD office building, was one of a series put on by the Environmental Defenders Office (EDO). In retrospect, it was a worthwhile offering but it could have been done better.

Lynn Saville from the Sydney Food Fairness Alliance was first off. Lynn played a leading role in creating the Hawkesbury Food System some years ago and presently serves as a councillor on Willoughby Council over on the northside. She presented the case for maintaining Sydney’s urban fringe market gardens in the face of a growing urbanisation being doggedly pursued by the development industry and its fellow travelers, the NSW Labor government.

Predictable in a way, Aaron Gadriel from the development industry lobby, the Urban Taskforce, played down the value of Sydney’s urban fringe market gardens although he said that he could not foresee the complete disappearance of farming from the region. His talk, however, failed to address potential future challenges such as the peaking of the global oil supply and its price-inflating impact on food costs and availability, or climate change and the increased potential of the eastern coastal plain in food production and the relation of urban growth to that.

Nor did he mention the economic value of the regional food industry to the city economy or the potential for this to be increased through maintaining city fringe farmland for agriculture in perpetuity. The idea of viable local economies was absent as Aaron promoted the value of big farms, claiming that small market gardens were unviable. His was very much a business as usual formula.

What was disappointing was that NSW Agriculture speaker, David Mason, who has been the department’s urban agriculture officer, did not discard his Powerpoint and address Aaron’s points. Instead, we got a far-too-hurried series of word and number-laden Powerpoint images flashed momentarily on the screen, far too rapidly for comprehension. Opportunity lost.

Can do better

The author and educator, Edward de Bono, says that the best criticism includes suggestions as to what could have been done better. So as someone who has been influenced by de Bono’s work, let me have a go. I’ll put my ideas together in three packages. Here goes…

Package #1 — bettering a bad format

What we, the audience, got from what could have been an engaging discussion was a sequence of three largely disconnected presentations in which Powerpoint-based information, not the ideas of the presenters, was the driver. It was as if the presenters had to get out what they planned to say rather than improvise by responding to what previous speakers had said.

These were content-driven presentations and they suffered as such presentations must.  When Angela Garber coined the popular term, “death by Powerpoint”, what she was getting at was this type of presentation. Powerpoint, after all, was coded to be an aid, not the main way to convey information. That is done through the speakers’ brain and mouth working together.

This was the type of seminar in which the presenters could have been instructed not to present, in which Powerpoint could have been discarded entirely. That is to say, in some situations having a series of speakers get up there one after another and do their scheduled presentation is an idea that is now… how do I say this?… suboptimal? …tired?.

Instead, this was the type of seminar in which a hosted conversation would have allowed something to have been done which was not done — the exploration of the speakers’ ideas and values. Rather than a Powerpoint-driven infodump of far-too-many facts and figures, a conversation guided by a leader to keep it to topic and on time would have been a far more engaging format. The audience would have walked away with more.

Why is this conventional approach all-far-too-often found in seminars tired? Because it is based on the old paradigm that says there are givers of presentations and there are recipients and they are separate species. This is one-way communication, a product of the industrial age, of the old university, the old media, of the superseded business model… so last century, as they say. It is, as US academic, communications and intellectual property commentator and author, Lawrence Lessig puts it, “read only” communication that requires a receptive and passive audience that… well, just sits there and opens its mouth only in the allocated time slot, which is usually far too short.

I’m not saying that the conventional seminar does not have a place anymore, just that we need more diversity in information delivery. The old approach ignores the reality that digital communications has made ours a read-write culture, that this is now the cultural reality that organisations of all kinds often lag far behind. Those formerly known as ‘the audience’ can be co-creators in a conversation that offers a collective wisdom.

Package #2 — the images

How do I sum up kindly and inoffensively, trying not to upset them, the visual style of the presenters’ Powerpoint images? Let me just say that their images were crammed full of sometimes superfluous information that was off-topic. The only exception to this, on occasion, was Aaron Gadriel’s images.

Here’s what I am trying to say on a kindly way — the presenters presented:

• no road map or lead image to encapsulate and summarise the main points they were about to make
• no end image to reiterate their main points and tie the presentation together
• far, far too many words per image
• more than one idea per image
• no photographic, video or sound bites — just words words words — no diversity
• irrelevant image content more to do with organisational history and background rather than sticking to the topic of the day — food security; this resulted in a squandering of time that would have been better used to make the speakers’ points
• too many, far too many bulleted lists, like this one.

These things are educationally unsound as well as displaying ignorance of the visual presentation of information and the cognitive processes related to the use of Powerpoint. That is, making information available in a form that people can easily use.

What I am saying is that the presenters ignored Golden Rule #1 of information design when using Powerpoint and similar software. And Golden Rule #2 it is this — less is more. Don’t write a dissertation when a couple words or an image will do. This has been more than adequately explored in Garr Reynolds well-regarded books on the visual design of information delivery and on making presentations.

Powerpoint images do not convey knowledge and ideas — the presenter does. It comes forth from his or her mouth, which, for the occasion, should be firmly plugged into his or her brain. In other words, the presenter should know their stuff and not rely on the poor prop of Powerpoint, which was designed as an aid to presenting, not as a substitute for the presenter.

Package #3 — the presentations

In their book, Making It Stick, brothers Dan and Chip Heath offer ideas of what makes messages stick in the brain, ideas derived from research carried out as part of their work (see Amazon review). This should be essential reading for all who get up and make public presentations, as should the books of Garr Reynolds, mentioned above, for those using Powerpoint.

Had the Heath brothers been read, then the speakers would have insinuated something completely missing from their presentations: emotion. Emotion as an initial reaction is hardwired into the human psyche and irrespective of the intellectual twaddle peddled by those who would see humans as mere molecular machines, it trumps objectivity. Emotion can be one of the most effective means of emphasising important points.

A speaker who shows passion for their topic via emotion is a speaker who enthuses. One who stands and reads or who just churns out verbiage without any body movement, without any change of tone and pitch and volume or any other display of evident enthusiasm is behaving like a verbal tranquiliser. Their information will come across as such.

Facts and figures populated the seminar’s Powerpoint images so plentifully that their effect was lost, as was the effect of creating a sense of credibility for the information that is so important to gaining audience confidence in making presentations. It was a case of fact and figure overdose, and like and drug overdose it disrupted the normal capacity of the brain to make sense of the world. All of that important quantitive information was lost in the dense verbiage of text that occupied the slides corner-to-corner.

The future

The EDO offers a valuable service in their public seminar series and my critical comments are offered merely as suggestions to improve this. Likewise, food security, the topic of the seminar, is something that is going to be very important in our and our childrens’ future.

The seminar brought together different interests, opposing interests, and could have been the forum in which these differences and the ideas and values they are based upon could have been explored in a calm and enlightening manner free of the polarisation they engender as discussions in the political or media sphere. What we got was, in effect, a series of position statements that, interesting and clarifying that might have been, did not dig into the issues to any depth as could have a conversation.

Nonetheless, thanks to the EDO for taking the initiative to organise these talks.