This weekend's Age had a nice little article about urban permaculture, which mentions the planting of edible landscapes or urban orchards in new housing estate developments around Melbourne. I'm really interested in issues about sustainable food supply and about urban home and market gardening. It seems to me crazy that in this era of concern for "sustainability" we seem to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak; by increasing residential densities (and average house sizes) and also reducing private outdoor space we are also removing the ability for households to engage in home food production, which is an important aspect of sustainable (and cost effective) food supply. At the same time we are pretty much getting rid of urban market gardens. So planting edible landscapes in new estates and encouraging urban orchards seems to me to be one really good way to address that problem.
My partner Tom is a keen gardener. I am less keen but I like to grow vegetables and compost, something I think is genetically inherited as both my father and grandfather always have vegetables growing in their backyards. Tom's a member of the Digger's club, which I highly recommend for anyone with a garden and an interest, no matter how slight, in permaculture, organic gardening and heirloom plants as they are stridently anti-GM (as am I) and sell a huge range of heirloom seeds. They also have provided this excellent plan for how you can turn an average back garden into your own market garden. I must say the idea of self-sufficiency really appeals to me.
Of course not everyone has a back garden, including me at the moment as I currently live in a small flat in inner Melbourne with not so much as a balcony. It's frustrating to have no composting faiclities and nowhere to grow so much as a tomato and some basil. This raises the question of what are the self-sufficiency options for an urban dweller? Well, they're limited, but there do seem to a growing number of community gardens in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney. These gardens seem to be as much about building community and social experiences as they are about sustainable food supply, and in this regard they have been shown to be especially helpful in large public housing estates. I'm all for building community, although the closest I think I would get to them myself is buying food at their farmers' markets (and I am conscious of food miles, or kilometres perhaps I should call them, so I do buy a lot of my fresh food at markets). Personally, I just don't think I am cut out for the communal gardening experience, but I do think it's a really great idea and it does seem to be quite a movement.
There are a lot of interesting blogs on the topic too, such as this one, which has a very detailed explanation of the community food growing movement in Melbourne, and this one, which is more of a global blog about sustainable food supply, food miles and that sort of stuff.
The other option for urban dwellers, which seems less common in Australia, is the European allotments idea, where you lease a small outdoor patch for your private use. This does appeal to me somewhat. A few years ago I spent a week in Stockholm in their summer, staying on the island of Södermalm. Stockholm is a really beautiful and interesting city, and Södermalm is a really interesting, vibrant area. It is densely populated and is full of apartment buildings, and I think Greta Garbo was born there. On the southern side of the island is a large park, the necessary green lung that makes a dense urban area livable, called Tantolunden, and that park has a huge area of allotments. It's a real joy to walk through and see the people tending to their little patches. I'm not sure how democratic it is, as apparently these allotments are now very expensive and demand far exceeds supply as you can imagine, but what joy it must be to have one? I think it's a marvellous idea. Here are some more photos and a description of the area I found in a lovely travel blog.
Allotments are a good option for urban dwellers to grow vegetables (if they're lucky enough to get one), and do you know, I could just see myself, as a younger and less depressed version of Arfur Fowler from EastEnders, tending to his allotment on the weekends. It seems a great way to balance an urban lifestyle in the requisite high density apartment as mandated by the consensus of post-Ebenezer Howard urban theorists with the human urge to grow and eat at least some of one's own food.
