'We want to end the monoculture of mown lawns': Plan to grow veggies on Canberra nature strips takes root

While many Canberrans might be painfully aware of the rule that forbids parking on the nature strip outside your home – known by the ACT Parking Infringement Guide as “stopping on a path/strip in a built-up area” – it turns out there are other uses for it.

Vegetables, anyone?

Local grassroots sustainability organisation SEE-Change is launching what it hopes will become a territory-wide movement to plant community veggie gardens on nature strips.

The ”Demonstration Verge Garden Network” will start with five across Belconnen next month, and comes with the full blessing of the ACT Government in the form of $22,470 of funding from the Community Garden Grants scheme.

SEE-Change project director Sarah Stonehill says the organisation came up with the idea after realising “a lot of people don’t know the actual regulations that allow you to use your verge”.

“Verges are often ignored, but they have great potential,” she says.

“SEE-Change aims to demonstrate how easy it is to grow veggies on your verge, by conducting workshops that cover regulations, responsibilities, soil improvement, planting and caring for a food garden.”

The project was inspired by the number of successful community gardens that have sprung up across the ACT in recent years, including the Ainslie Urban Farm, which takes up a quarter-acre (1000 sqm) block in Canberra’s inner north.

Ainslie Urban Farm founder Fiona Buining is also helping out.

“One, we want to help people grow food, also be a little bit more sustainable and bring communities together,” Sarah adds.

The organisation is calling on five “verge champions” across Belconnen to host the five demonstration gardens before they host “installation workshops” at each one in February.

“We’re hoping people will realise how easy it is, and then little gardens will pop up all over Canberra.”

The government’s rules allow for “groundcovers, native grasses, food plants, and shrubs” on public verges, provided the plants don’t exceed 50 cm tall (or 20 cm in Bushfire Prone Areas) and are not within 1.5 m of a footpath or utility point.

As areas “notoriously driven on, walked on, and ignored”, Sarah says the priority is restoring soil quality.

“Part of the workshops will be showing you how to improve the soil with the no-dig method, planting pretty basic leafy greens,” she says.

“But then it’s up to the people – they can grow anything there.”

The project will run for 12 months, during which SEE-Change volunteers will continue to help out the gardeners and host further workshops.

Sarah hopes the “casual surveillance” of passers-by will be enough to deter would-be vandals.

“I’m part of another community garden in Hughes, which was vandalised just last week … but the idea is we’ll have a sign saying ‘You don’t need to vandalise this, just be part of it and enjoy it’.”

Based on what she’s seeing with other community gardens, Sarah is confident the idea will take off.

“There are quite a number of very large community gardens here, but they’re traditionally a large area you drive to and you have a plot you work by yourself, so this is aimed more at bringing it closer to your home, so it’s handy,” she says.

“We want it to end the monoculture of mown lawns all over Canberra.”

Visit the SEE-Change website to register to join a verge community garden workshop.