The Garden of Edible Delights

Saturday 13 March 2010, 1:31 PM
By The Team | Posted in Events

Mention the word ‘Digger’ around any workplace kitchenette in the city and chances are one’s ears will prick, green thumbs will emerge from shirt sleeves and lists of recently planted heirloom seeds, lemonade trees and ornamental edibles will be forthcoming. Gardening is the new ‘black’ and the hip are growing their own greens.

Diggers, a club for subversive gardeners, have now taken over the City Square, transforming concrete and aggregate into an edible garden showcasing the bounty of edibles that can be grown in tiny spaces.

Touch, smell and taste your way through the garden as you wander through the snakebean and Malabar spinach entwined arches, past giant sunflowers and tubs of rhubarb, corn, pumpkin and fragrant herbs.

Looking for ways to bring down your personal greenhouse gas emissions? If what we eat represents a third of them (through agricultural resource use and food miles), you’ve just found your way to do the planet a favour and provide yourself with some added organic flavour.

Get the inspiration you need to transform your balcony, terrace or window-sill into an  ornamental, sensory garden and sustainable, flourishing food bowl. Potted herbs, lettuce and spinach require just a little love and light to grow on a window-sill.

Balconies can be framed by pot-perfect plants including hardy olives, dwarf avocado, pomegranate and espaliered citrus trees, fragrant and flowering rosemary and lavender, and hanging baskets of strawberries and tomatoes.

Along with fragrant and flowering home-grown herbs to spice up your meals, edible flowers, such as nasturtiums and pansies, can be used to garnish salads while your candied violets and gardenia will complete your ‘so city, so chic’ cupcakes.

Metlink’s Edible Garden will reclaim the City Square, corner Swanston and Collins Streets, from 12 to 19 March as part of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival. Chefs Stephanie Alexander, Jude Blereau (Whole Food Cooking) and Matt Wilkinson (Circa) will demonstrate pan-work using home-grown Edible Garden produce on site.

Sustainable Living Festival 2010

Monday 15 February 2010, 1:25 PM
By The Team | Posted in People

Two days of inspiring examples of ecological and social sustainability will be on show this weekend as the 2010 Sustainable Living Festival Main Event descends on Federation Square. We chat to President of the Sustainable Living Foundation, Giselle Wilkinson, about the event and elephants in the room.

The Sustainable Living Festival is the largest sustainability event in Australia. Why was Melbourne chosen to host this event?

Melbourne is a city that nurtures its creative and socially avante-garde citizens to enable a culture willing to tackle the challenges and opportunities of sustainable living.

It’s also the heartland of the most innovative community-based social and environmental sustainability initiatives and the home base and headquarters of the Sustainable Living Foundation.

The event attracted over 124,000 visitors to Federation Square last year. Why do you think the event is so popular?

The Festival is positive, solution-oriented and authentic. It meets a need in the community for reliable, trustworthy information and joins the dots between the many related sustainability issues.

Can you tell us a little bit about this year’s festival theme?

“Climate Change: It’s the Elephant in the Room” is this year’s theme. It’s certainly too big to ignore anymore – our carbon emissions are 597 million tonnes and growing daily. We want everyone to help get the elephant moving with the big solutions to a big issue at this year’s festival.

Who should come to the Sustainable Living Festival?

There is something there for everybody. A mooch along the river through the many marquees will find people with interesting expertise or products – the Festival will be a great place to pick up sustainable presents for people during the year and even next Christmas.

It will also have great food and entertainment, art installations and informative talks – debates, great speakers, workshops and seminars, exhibitors, performers will all be there.

Those willing to hear the brutal truth can do so, ask questions and participate as can those wanting practical information applicable to daily home or work life.

The festival is colourful, stimulating, fun and free. I think the vast majority of people go away determined to make some positive change towards living more sustainably.

The Sustainable Living Festival Main Event takes place at Federation Square from 19 – 21 February.

Slow Fashion

Friday 5 February 2010, 5:04 PM
By The Team | Posted in Events

Slow Fashion may make you think of catwalk models walking at a snail’s pace, but it’s actually a growing fashion movement to support the environment while still looking stylish.

On Wednesday that’s melbourne attended the Slow Fashion clothes swap at Trades Hall, a fundraiser for the Sustainable Living Festival. More than 60 women (and two men) each brought six items of clothing to be exchanged. These pre-loved items were hung on racks to form one giant extended wardrobe and many found homes with very happy new owners.

Here’s what some of them had to say:

“I thought it would be lots of fun and I wanted to support this event, especially as the leftover clothes at the end go to charity.

I found this gorgeous light cotton dress which I’m wearing which I’m going to give to my friend who would this love this. You can often find beautiful fabrics and styles in recycled fashion.” ~ Regina

“This sounded like fun and I have bags and bags of clothes sitting around at home, waiting for me to do something with them. It’s great to be able to exchange stuff. I keep meaning to organise a stall at Camberwell market but I just never get the time, so this is perfect.

I found this vintage 60s dress which I love. You can really find something unique at something like this and the girls that come to clothes swaps are more likely to have interesting taste – so you are bound to get something different!” ~ Trina

“I wanted to volunteer for Slow Fashion clothes swap because I really want to do something for the environment. Every day we consume so much and by doing this, I can at least help in a small way.

This is my favourite piece, it’s so simple and elegant and you can see the workmanship in the way it’s made. I’m so into recycled fashion, there is real history in the clothes – you can feel the previous owners. I got a bargain today and it feels good!” ~ Liz

“I heard about this event through an email my friend passed on. It’s funny because my friend and I swap clothes all the time but this is better as there’s a bigger pool to draw on.

Recycled fashion is great. Everything is one-off and there’s always the thrill of finding hidden gems like this dress. It’s very 90s, it reminds of a flower girl dress.” ~ Rose