One suburb’s plan to take over the streets.

THE transformation of Chippendale, in inner city Sydney, began three years ago. “We held a ‘Food for the Future Fair’, invited local farmers and closed off three city blocks,” explains resident and sustainability expert Michael Mobbs.

The council donated 200 fruit trees to be given away, and people were shown how to plant them in front of their homes.

“From then on there was a change in momentum in the suburb. Now it’s understood that this is a place where we grow food and do things differently,” he says.

Mr Mobbs is the author of Sustainable House, a detailed guide to the way his family retrofitted their home, together with the lessons and results garnered over more than a decade.

Now he’s drawn a blueprint for overhauling the entire suburb. The ‘Sustainable Streets and Community Plan’ covers matters as diverse as transport, stormwater harvesting, heat-reflective roads, food growing, and greening buildings and businesses. It’s available to download from the Sustainable Chippendale website.

One of the most innovative proposals is to link rate rebates with householders’ sustainability behaviour. For example, residents who compost (and attend a council-run workshop) would receive a discount on their rates; likewise for businesses that grow vertical gardens, or householders who trap stormwater on their blocks.

“I’m trying to link financial and other rewards to public and private actions in our streets,” he says. Many of these changes would reduce councils’ spending on infrastructure, maintenance and waste collection.

Similarly, Mr Mobbs sees a role for a streamlined or pre-approval process for projects that meet defined eco-criteria. “So many councils say they want to be sustainable, but they don’t give priority to sustainable projects. You just go in the queue with the business-as-usual,” he says.

Last year, the residents submitted their plan to the City of Sydney. They’re still waiting for a decision. Although Mr Mobbs fears it has disappeared into the council’s “black box”, he and his neighbours are forging ahead with several activities, including installing bike parking, converting stormwater drains and running a box scheme for local fruit and vegies.

There are about 50 residents who are actively, but informally, involved: they tend to devise their schemes while they’re at work in the garden. “We’ve found that it’s better to do things, rather than hold meetings. It’s projects that bring change faster than discussions, I think,” he says.

Because the suburb comprises about 4000 workers, as well as 4000 residents, they’re also beginning to work with businesses – starting by training an employee from a local café about how to better recycle waste and grow food.

Mr Mobbs says the plan isn’t just about Chippendale; it’s the kind of transformation required – and replicable – in every city. Already, delegations from two Chinese provinces have visited for a briefing.

“It’s really important that we make our suburbs and our cities sustainable this side of 2020,” he says. “Government is too slow. Communities have to show the way – that’s why we’re doing what we’re doing.”

But so far, the biggest change in Chippendale isn’t in the hard infrastructure. It’s become a place where neighbours introduce themselves in the streets.

“The ultimate goal of sustainability is not a conversation about water efficient taps. It’s really a conversation about how we see the world and relate to it.”

Global worries sow the seeds for a local harvest.

IN Melton, 40 kilometres west of Melbourne, Carey Priest has taken a lease on a small farm. He’s starting slowly, beginning with a modest market garden and 100 free-range chooks that peck their way around the old olive and almond groves on the property.

Each week, Mr Priest supplies about 35 dozen eggs to several food co-operatives in the city’s inner west. “Many of my customers have visited and seen the chickens and the conditions where their eggs come from,” he says. “We run regular open days – it’s as transparent as it can possibly get.”

His farm is one of the initiatives listed on a new food website, Local Harvest, created by the Ethical Consumer Group.

“The website is a place to find food choices outside the mainstream supermarket system, or the industrial food system, and to find those easily,” explains the site’s coordinator, Nick Ray.

When you type in your postcode, Local Harvest lists the food co-ops, farmers’ markets, vegie box programs, organic cafes and small retailers nearby, as well as groups such as community gardens and food swaps. There are already nearly 2000 entries around the country, with more to be generated by the site’s users.

As part of the launch, Mr Ray is promoting the weeklong Local Harvest Challenge. From April 1, participants will try to reduce the degree of separation between them and their food.

“It’s an opportunity to become more deliberate about your food choices. You can make it as easy or as hard as you like – for some people it might be shopping at a farmers’ market for the week, or for others, it might be eating from within a certain radius of where you live,” he says.

But why take the challenge at all? Julian Cribb, author of The Coming Famine, says initiatives such as Local Harvest are springing up in many countries – and for good reason.

He argues that humanity is facing scarcity in nearly everything we need to produce large amounts of food, including water, nutrients, land and topsoil, fish, cheap oil and stable climates. (You can find a summary of his findings and solutions on the Sustainable Table website.)

“We have to reinvent our food system, and that includes reinventing how we grow food in our cities,” Mr Cribb says. “At present our cities are wasting vast amounts of water and precious nutrients. We need to channel those back into urban and agricultural food production.”

He sees a future food system that involves both high- and low-tech farming methods, but both, crucially, will need to produce on a smaller energy footprint. “Oil prices will go through the roof over the next two or three decades,” he says. “There’s no point in developing an agriculture that requires oil and synthetic fertilisers if they’re going to become too expensive.”

Individuals must help bring about that change, he says. To do so, we also have a personal incentive to switch away from the “killer diet” that contributes to lifestyle illnesses such as obesity, cancer, heart disease and stroke, and towards more fresh fruit and vegetables.

“Agriculture is one of those things that individuals can do. You don’t have to wait for some dreary government to catch up. If we wait, too little will happen and far too late. We need creative people to show the way.”

Read this article at The Age online

A town shrunk its footprint when the residents showed their colours.

IF you pass through Heyfield, a small timber town in Gippsland, at the foot of the Snowy Mountains, you’ll notice something strange a-flapping: flags. Hundreds of them – white ones, blue ones and green ones – flying from businesses and homes throughout the streets.

It all began a year and a half ago, in front of the local supermarket. “We did a survey to see what the community thought,” explains Julie Bryer from the Heyfield Community Resource Centre. Volunteers from the centre had already installed thousands of efficient light globes and hundreds of shower roses around town, but residents weren’t sure what to do next.

“What came up was that people wanted more information on environmental sustainability practices. They were concerned about costs and they also didn’t know where to start,” she says.

The resource centre hatched a plan in three stages: white, blue and green. To meet each level, householders must tick-off several items from a list of about two-dozen things you can do to save water, electricity and waste, and to live longer in your home.

Participants must stay on each stage for three months before they’re eligible to step up. Items listed under the white flag are free or very cheap; big-ticket expenses, such as solar panels or hot water, come later on.

“We insisted that everyone do the three step process, because if I put solar panels on my house while I have the bad light globes and leaky taps and haven’t mulched my garden, then really I’m not helping myself and the environment as much as I can,” Ms Bryer explains.

“When we assessed houses for the blue flag, a lot of people asked to re-do the white stage first, because they’d gone back and completed most of the requirements they hadn’t met before. That was really encouraging.”

Ms Bryer started the program by asking all the businesses in town to participate, and only one refused. Since then, nearly half of Heyfield’s 2000 residents have taken part. The resource centre also coordinated a bulk purchase scheme for solar panels. “We’ve found that people are becoming more interested in growing vegetables as well,” she says. “They’re coming into the community garden here asking for information.”

The flags, by virtue of public participation, have been crucial to the scheme’s success. “People thought, ‘Joe Blow across the road has got a flag, so I better get one too’,” Ms Bryer says. Interestingly, while the women in town were the early adopters, many men have led their family’s push to achieve blue flag status.

“It worked right through the community: young ones did it and oldies did it too. We held information sessions at the primary schools, and often mums and dads came in with their littlies, saying their children were interested,” she says.

The resource centre funded the program itself, in part from the proceeds of its weekly local paper, the Heyfield News. Late last year, the scheme’s extraordinary success was recognised when it won a world environment day award from the United Nations Association of Australia.

“We had lots of fabulous volunteers and the participants in Heyfield were really enthusiastic – they just ran with it,” Ms Bryer says. “You can imagine when we won the United Nations award! Oh my goodness, everyone was beside themselves.”

Read this article at The Age online

Growing vegies gets cheaper and easier when you save the source.

CHRIS Brock’s vegie patch is laid out in terraces, stepping up the slope above his house in Healesville. It’s well fenced to keep out wombats and netted to ward off birds. Right at the top of the hill, he’s working on a different line of defence.

In the top bed, he’s growing General Mackay climbing beans, but his family won’t be eating any this year – they’re saving them for seed instead.

“It’s a rare variety, and I only had a small amount of seed,” Mr Brock says, “so I’ve grown them out to hundreds of seeds. Next year I can grow a decent crop myself, and share them with others.”

Mr Brock is an environmental scientist, and the convenor of Yarra Valley Seedsavers. As well as the climbing beans, this year he’ll be keeping seeds from broccoli, swedes, wombok and kale, to list a few.

“I’m concerned about conservation of seed varieties and about maintaining diversity in what we eat,” he explains. “Saving seeds and growing your own vegies is a practical way to be less reliant on the industrialised food system, which is degrading biodiversity.”

His group meets before the change of seasons. Together, they sort seeds, share tips and deposit and withdraw from their collective seed-bank, according to their needs.

“There’s a lot of cultural information you don’t get on a packet of seeds. When you meet the person who grew them, there’s so much you learn about how to grow that vegetable, when it’s ripe and how to prepare it,” he says.

Brock and his fellow gardeners are part of the national Seed Savers Network, founded by Jude and Michel Fanton. The couple have worked on similar projects in over forty countries. They’ve also published a guide, The Seed Savers’ Handbook, which contains instructions for over a hundred vegetables, herbs and flowers, including tips on avoiding cross-pollination among certain varieties, as well as storage and cultivation.

Ms Fanton says there’s no reason to be intimidated. “For plants that go to head, you can rely on self-seeding. It’s the simplest way, and it’s what we’re doing in our garden more and more,” she says. “Let things like carrots, parsnips, parsley or dill go to seed, then whack the seed-head around into other beds.”

When it comes to tomatoes, she also suggests starting with the most straightforward method. “You can just squeeze the seeds over a paper towel, write the name on it, let them dry on the table or the windowsill, then roll them up and put them in a jar.”

No matter the plant, the most important thing is to make sure the seeds are completely dry before you store them – otherwise they’ll decompose.

Once you get in the habit, you’re in for a pleasant surprise. “It gets easier and easier to grow things, because the plants are adapted to your soil, your growing style and your climate,” Ms Fanton says.

“Home-saved seeds are changing all the time and that aspect of evolution is really important for the way we cope with climate change.”

There’s another, less tangible benefit, too. “Sharing and saving seed is a way to remember people too,” she says. “For example, we’ve got a sweet French fennel from Michel’s aunty and we’ve had it for 31 years. It really adds a poignant aspect to the word heirloom.”

Word-of-mouth advice works in every language.

LINA Hassan is very enthusiastic about household sustainability. “Everywhere I go, this is my message,” she says, leaning forward on her couch, in her Thomastown home.

She arrived in Australia from Lebanon in 1985, escaping the civil war. The day after she fled her apartment in Tripoli, the building was destroyed.

Ms Hassan, now 47, is an aged-care and refugee support worker with Victorian Arabic Social Services. She’s also a bilingual sustainability assessor with Environment Victoria.

When she began training for the organisation’s Green Town project, she discovered – happily – that some wartime deprivations had prepared her for the long drought and rising electricity bills in Melbourne.

“I like all the tips, really, because back home during the war, we were already adopting some of the strategies,” she says. “We never had electricity. We only had four hours of water each day.”

If her smile weren’t so open, I’d think she was making a tongue-in-cheek comparison. But Ms Hassan is speaking in earnest. The connection is safety – an urge to provide security for her children; later in our conversation, she describes climate change as a waiting bomb. “We have to act, all of us. We all worry.”

With future generations in mind, she is most worried about water. Together with her husband, Raafat El Kashef, who is also a Green Town assessor, she’s installed tanks and become an avid water recycler. “I’m Muslim and I pray five times daily. I was wasting one bucket every time I washed,” she says. Now, she uses it on her herb and flower garden.

She is critical of the state government’s decision to ease water restrictions. “It’s too soon,” she says. “People were adopting ways to save water. We don’t know if we’ll have shortages again in the future.”

Under the Green Town program, Ms Hassan visited over 40 households and businesses in the Lebanese community in Melbourne’s north, explaining sustainability issues in Arabic.

One in five Victorians speaks a language other than English at home. For many people, mainstream eco-advice – like this column – is inaccessible. 

As a remedy, Environment Victoria has posted info sheets in 20 different languages on its website. Then there’s Green Town, which operates like a pyramid scheme. The organisation has trained six community leaders, who oversee 59 assessors, who’ve visited hundreds of homes and businesses from different language and cultural backgrounds. All up, over 10,000 people have heard the message.

Nina Bailey, who coordinates Green Town, says it’s the most effective behaviour change campaign her organisation has run. Based on the participants’ estimates, they’ve cut energy and water use by about a third, and waste to landfill by one quarter, on average. Converted into power and water bills, that amounts to savings of more than $500 per year.

Despite this success, the state government has withdrawn its funding for the scheme. Ms Bailey is hopeful she’ll find a way to keep it going. She says the results say something powerful, no matter what language you speak: awkward as it may feel, talking about climate change and sustainability with friends and family can be transformative.

“If you have knowledge, it’s worth sharing, because people want to hear it,” she says. “Your neighbours may be interested. People who seem different are often concerned about the same issues you are.”

Read this article at The Age online

New eco-home research makes a financial statement.

LAST year, the Cape Paterson Ecovillage broke new ground when its high eco-standards were written into the local planning scheme.

The development will border on the existing town of Cape Paterson, on the Bass Coast, about two hours south-east of Melbourne. Each of the 220 new houses must be oriented for passive solar gain and have a minimum energy rating of 7.5 stars, as well as efficient appliances, at least 2.5 kilowatts of solar energy and 10,000 litres in rainwater tanks.

Now, the project’s developers have released research showing that all these features will save homeowners money over the long term.

“When we started, we wanted to pull together all the proven sustainable housing solutions in one place, and to attempt to deliver a carbon neutral project,” says the ecovillage’s director, Brendan Condon.

That was eight years ago, and back then, he thought they’d need to offer incentives to help buyers pay the extra upfront costs. But because of the steep rise in utility bills in recent years, and the price hikes still to come, it’s no longer necessary.

“We’ve hit a clear tipping point now where the uptake of these sustainability features makes absolute economic sense,” Mr Condon says.

He says that if homeowners re-invest savings into their repayments, they could cut years from their mortgages. And once an electric vehicle (powered by extra solar panels) is in the driveway, “the economic benefits expand rapidly”.

“If we hit high predicted energy and water cost futures, you could pay your mortgage off between seven and eight years early. The benefits accrue to about $300,000 over a 25-year mortgage.”

Independently reviewed research, funded by Sustainability Victoria, compared a Cape Paterson home against three benchmarks – an existing 4-star dwelling, and both a larger and smaller new 6-star home. Consumption was assumed to remain constant in each house, no matter the price rises.

The report’s author, consultant Anthony Szatow, says that in all the scenarios modelled, the greener homes came out in front. “Solar power, efficient appliances and water tanks all return in excess of 10 per cent, after tax. Most sustainability features provide very attractive return on investment, purely on a financial basis,” he says.

“And that financial proposition is just going to get better and better as the cost of centralised energy and water goes up.”

With the strict guidelines for the Cape Paterson homes in mind, Mr Szatow says householders should shop around for plans. “Experienced, skilled designers and architects should be able to get a new home to a 7.5-star rating with very little premium,” he says.

He adds that another financial benefit will come at the point of sale. “It’s early days in the market for sustainable homes, but the indication so far is that homes with the highest star ratings and solar power do have a resale premium.”

For Mr Condon, it’s not enough that the ecovillage has gone green alone. He wants the mainstream building market to change its ways too.

“Rising energy, fuel and water costs are going to become intractable problems for our community,” he says.

“You have a choice now to build conventionally and lock in rising costs, or build sustainably and protect your wallet and the environment – and to do it in a comfortable house.”

Read this article at The Age online

Start your engines, sometimes.

THERE are now well over 200 share cars dotted around inner Melbourne. And before long, that number will double again.

Car share schemes work like this: you join up, book online when you need a vehicle, then walk over and swipe in. In Melbourne, there are three companies: GoGet, Flexicar and GreenShareCar. The rates and plans differ, but all involve a membership fee as well as a charge for usage.

It’s a model that’s growing rapidly in many countries, and one that steers gently into the space left vacant by shifts in the way we’re buying and using cars.

In recent years, the increase in car ownership has slowed in Australia, and the distance we drive in each vehicle has begun to decline. Meanwhile, public transport patronage is on the rise.

Stephen Ingrouille, from Going Solar, publishes a newsletter on sustainable transport. He says car sharing reduces congestion and lowers greenhouse gas emissions.

“We’re not going to wean this society off its car obsession for a long time – that’s just a reality. But car sharing is a good intermediate solution,” he says.

“Share cars tend to be energy efficient models: the companies want them to run as cheaply as possible, because petrol is included in the cost.”

Research by consultants Frost and Sullivan in the USA found that in 2009, every share car replaced 15 private cars, and that car sharing members drove nearly one-third less than they would if they owned a vehicle. Widespread growth of these schemes would mean fewer motors, used more efficiently.

Mr Ingrouille argues that governments should require apartment developers to swap large car parks for modest share car bays, or even a taxi rank – thereby improving housing affordability, as well as reducing traffic.

“A lot of energy goes into manufacturing cars, but often they’re just sitting idly,” he says. “Typically, a family might have had two cars; with car sharing they could have just one. Or for people like me, who prefer public transport, it’s great to have access to a car occasionally.”

Mike Murray, from GoGet, says householders join up to save money and for convenience – especially in areas where parking is limited. In Surrey Hills, in inner Sydney, two out of every ten licence-holders are GoGet members.

Late last year, the company purchased its first fully electric vehicles – Mitsubishi iMiEVs – and one is now parked at The Nicholson Apartments, in Coburg. Another one will soon be stationed in South Yarra.

Mr Murray says electric vehicles are perfectly suited to car sharing, because the average GoGet trip is only 30 kilometres.

“People suffer from what we call ‘range anxiety’ with electric vehicles, but you could do more than three of our regular trips before you’d have to charge it at all.”

He believes car sharing can spread beyond Zone 1. “We’re trying to develop a low-density car sharing model, because that’s where most Melbournians are – we’re not all in Brunswick or Southbank.”

GoGet will begin by parking shared utility vehicles at Stockland’s Selandra Rise development in Casey. “The developer is telling us that a lot of households have three vehicles. If they owned one car, and had car sharing instead, they’d save a lot of money.”

Read the article at The Age online

Branch out with backyard fruits of yore

CECILIA Thornton was always a vegie gardener. Then one day, in a dentist’s waiting room, she read an article about heritage apples growing in Cornwall.

“It was the names that got to me,” she explains. “These fascinating names – Lord Lambourne, Beauty of Bath and Cox’s Orange Pippin. I was really struck by them.”

On further research, Ms Thornton discovered that people in Australia were conserving these varieties too. Now, she’s the president of the Heritage Fruits Society, which manages Petty’s Orchard in Templestowe.

Every autumn at the orchard, the society holds its Antique Apple Tasting Festival. The 2012 festival will be held on Sunday March 25; visitors can take a tour, and taste and rate the 200 varieties grown onsite.

“Heritage varieties have been selected by gardeners and diners over centuries, even going back to Roman times. They’ve been chosen for reasons of flavour, ripening time, or colour, or for their resistance to certain diseases or their cooking consistency,” she says.

Ms Thornton argues they’re important not only for their historical links. “The commercial varieties in supermarkets are chosen mainly because of their handling and keeping qualities, so they don’t bruise as easily and they keep for ten months. They’re not chosen for their unique flavour or their juiciness.

“Some of the heritage varieties only keep for a week once they’re picked, but they taste like heaven. If you don’t have one in your backyard, you’re missing out.”

So how should you choose your trees?

First, survey the space. You can maximise your harvest in a few ways: by choosing columnar varieties that don’t branch out; by pruning normal trees into a shape tall and skinny; or by “espaliering” them flat and wide against the fence.

“You can also do duo or trio plantings,” Ms Thornton suggests. “In one hole, plant two or three apples, plums or pears, about 150 millimetres apart. Just make sure they’re varieties that will cross-pollinate.”

Next, choose your fruit. What do you like to eat? “We’re really lucky in Melbourne, we have a climate that’s kind to everything from stone fruit and citrus, to sub-tropical fruits,” she says.

Ms Thorton is growing several sub-tropicals, including jaboticaba, longan and wampee. “You can grow them here so long as they’re near something that holds the sun’s heat, such as masonry or water,” she says.

When there was no room to walk around her thriving backyard in Bayside, she bought a block on the Mornington Peninsula.

“I’ve got a lot of rare and unusual fruits. I’ve got gooseberries, josterberries and mountain paw paw,” she says. “I’ve got something called a jujube, which is very popular in China because it has stress relieving properties and tastes delicious like sweet dates.”

If you’re looking for something less exotic, Ms Thornton says you can’t go wrong with citrus. The Heritage Fruits Society website has tips for planning, planting and care, as well as historical catalogues, fruit poems and exhaustive lists of varieties.

As a general rule, it’s best to plant fruit trees in winter, when they’re dormant. “Fruit trees are a lot less work than a vegetable garden, but while they’re young you have to water them through summer and mulch them well,” she says. “Feed them during their growing season with plenty of organic chook poo and blood-and-bone with potash.”

Read this story at the Age online

What would the festive season be like without the bells and whistles?

ONE way of preparing for Christmas involves buying new things – a lot of new things. But there are other ways too.

The New South Wales Uniting Church runs a website called What Would Jesus Buy?, which contains articles and links – both spiritual and secular – on the matter of consumption. As the website’s coordinator, Stephen Webb, explains, its tagline is “Stop the shopocalypse”.

“For Christians, this is the time of advent, so there’s lots of thinking about the way we lead our lives,” he says. “How can we use our time and income to do something useful, rather than just contribute further to the consumer culture around us?”

This year, with scientists’ warnings about climate change continuing and the global financial system seeming ever more volatile, there’s a growing chorus for a different kind of Christmas.

In the United States, the Occupy Wall Street movement has not only spread throughout the country, but also to Santa’s sleigh, with campaign called Occupy Xmas. It draws upon Buy Nothing Christmas, a longer-standing initiative complete with amusing, snarky posters (“Santa Came, Jesus Wept”).

On the environmental front, Mr Webb says the relationship between consumption and climate change is clear, but can be minimised with careful thought. “You can still buy certain things and have a good time without contributing to injustice, pollution and global warming,” he says. “And as we celebrate, we can think about what we’re celebrating and what is of value to us.”

If you’re looking for hints about alternatives, Environment Victoria has put together a festive season guide, which contains gift ideas and tactics for reducing waste and needless expense, from wrapping paper to table decorations.

“Christmas is a time of incredibly high consumption, in so many ways,” says Michele Burton from Environment Victoria. “There are all the presents, wrapping and cards, but there’s also all the food, and typically, a lot gets wasted.”

Meat – especially red meat – leaves a hefty mark on greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity. “We’re not suggesting you go vegetarian for Christmas, but it’s a good idea to reduce your meat consumption,” she says.

For more detailed information about the footprint of your yuletide food, see the Ethical Consumer Group’s guide to Christmas, and its new Guide to Ethical Supermarket Shopping, updated for 2012.

When it comes to gifts, Ms Burton says families could opt for a Kris Kringle, rather than buy for everyone; make or bake their own presents; or give experiences rather than things.

“If you do buy something, choose items that will last – for example, wooden toys will last much longer than plastic ones,” she says.

If the choices appear too complex, keep the details in perspective by focussing on bigger issues around the home, such as buying GreenPower, limiting consumption overall and avoiding flights. The eco-savings of obsessing over re-used wrapping paper will be well and truly shredded if you jet to Bali on Boxing Day.

On that note, Ms Burton says the holiday season is a fine time to establish patterns for the year to come. “You can look back on the year you’ve had and the choices you’ve made, and aim for your Christmas to reflect the way you want to live,” she says.

Read this article at The Age online

That plant you despised could become your dinner

ADAM Grubb makes a beeline for a plant clumping in the mulch, behind a park bench, next to the barbeque area.

“This is mallow,” he explains, “which is related to the marshmallow plant and to okra. You can eat the leaves, the seeds and the flowers. It’s eaten widely around the world, especially in the Middle-East.”

We’re in a small, typical park in Brunswick. Mr Grubb, from Very Edible Gardens, runs regular edible weeds walks, in which he traces an extraordinary, wholly overlooked fact.

“The vast majority of herbaceous annual weeds – the most common plants that pop up without invitation – are edible. And a lot of them are medicinal,” he says.

Most can act as substitutes for our normal leafy greens. Mr Grubb also suggests blending them with fruit to make green smoothies.

But it so happens that today in the park, we find mallow, with its seeds, and salsify, a starchy root that looks like a white carrot. “They could be the foundational parts of a meal,” he explains. Nearby we identify five more edibles, side-by-side: milk thistle, dock, dandelion, wild lettuce and cleavers.

At the moment, Mr Grubb is up to his elbows researching edible weeds for a book he’s writing with Annie Raser-Rowland, who teaches workshops on the subject at CERES Environment Park. (While you wait for theirs, see this booklet by Pat Collins.)

Facts about all kinds of plants roll off his tongue – like these about cleavers: “Also known as sticky-weed or goosegrass, it’s in a lot of ancient medicinal books as a lymphatic stimulator. Pliny the Elder said it’s good to improve one’s lankness and to keep from fatness,” he says. “You can also make a coffee substitute out of it.”

If that sounds obscure, here’s something more straightforward. “Remarkably, a large percentage of these wild plants are more nutritious than spinach,” he says. “They’re higher in vitamins A, C and E, higher in omega-3, and much higher in anti-oxidants.”

Aside from the nutritional benefits, there’s a practical plus to all this weed-eating. “Learning to see the benefits of these plants is revelatory, because it means you have to do less work in the garden. The only definition for a weed is a plant out of place. We can do the weeding in our minds,” he says.

Mr Grubb offers a word of caution, however: some are poisonous. The Greek philosopher Socrates was sentenced to death by drinking a cup of hemlock, which is common around Melbourne. “Don’t go eating anything you haven’t identified beyond doubt,” he says.

Ms Raser-Rowland says that from an ecological perspective, many weeds help repair damaged land. “They can stabilise and rebuild topsoil, trap nutrients and slow water movement,” she says. “In doing that, they create homes and food for birds, insects and other animals.”

She says the good things about backyard vegie patches, such as reducing transport and packaging, are magnified in the case of weeds.

“If these plants can produce food in our urban areas, with no need for labour or inputs pillaged from other ecosystems, it seems worth asking whether they have a role here – not an unchecked role, but a role.”

“There’s also something very, very reassuring in walking your territory and picking food. It has been the dominant activity of most of our human history, so perhaps that shouldn’t be surprising.”

Read this article at The Age online