Hot Spots: urban gardening

Tuesday 20 July 2010, 12:53 PM
By The Team | Posted in Places

Legend has it you need seven acres of fertile land just for a potato and a sprig of asparagus. We say Melbourne is just the urban environment to prove that legend wrong. These days, whether you live in a high-rise ‘shoebox’ or a converted ice-cream truck, you can still find a way to grow your own greenery.

According to three city-based gardening ventures, creativity and a bit of dirt are all that’s required to get your blooming on.

Urban Reforestation

An ecologically friendly venture has recently set down its roots along the water’s edge in Docklands. Urban Reforestation is a community garden, eco-shop and educational centre, proudly sprouting out among the state-of-the-art buildings in Victoria Harbour.

The centre offers gardening classes and cooking classes – and cooking-from-the-garden classes. Come along and see how to grow your salad and eat it too.

Surviving Sustainability

Condiment – Adventures in Food and Form is a publication and project-base exploring food and creativity and food and community. This group is the mastermind behind the multi-sleeve picnic rug – both a rug to dine upon and a cosy garment to share with a friend.

The group’s next foray into multi-functionality is a studio kitchen with a built-in worm farm and window garden, a collaboration with Sibling architecture as part of the Surviving Sustainability:_______ project curated by ffiXXed.

You can see the kitchen at the West Wing Space in Melbourne Central where it is on display for the duration of the State of Design Festival  

Urban Crop

Artisan floral architect, Joost Bakker, has invented a special technique for transporting and storing portable flowers and herbs – so now our city has its very own mobile plant service.

Plants come with root systems intact so they will continue to flourish in your home. Herbs stay fresh for a week or two in your kitchen – if you can wait that long to harvest them. Flowers will bloom far and beyond the life of a cut flower.

Once your crop is finished, the whole thing (including the pot) can be transferred to the compost heap. Alternately, take it back to Urban Crop for composting – and pick up a replacement.

Find out where you can purchase Urban Crop products below.

LINKS
Urban Crop purchase locations
Urban Reforestation
Condiment – Adventures in Food and Form
Urban Crop
State of Design Festival
Sibling
ffiXXed
West Wing Space
Joost Bakker

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.