By
Goody Two Shoes
Garage Sale Trail
Republic of Everyone
Waverley Council
Three Blue Ducks
Description
Grow it Local is a project that celebrates backyard, balcony, community and windowsill food farming. Grow your own food, register it on the map, have a conversation online to share your gardening tips and recipes. Come together to share a meal prepared by a local chefs using the food you and others have provided. Grow, share and eat.
Currently Grow it Local is in it's pilot phase and is a way for the client (Waverley Council) to achieve part of its sustainability plan (reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with food production and transportation) by encouraging local food supply.
Key Features
and/or Benefits
A lot of the time gardening is seen as being a bit daggy, or something you need a lot of space for. Grow it Local demonstrates that everyone, no matter how big or small your patch is can grow something.
The map makes what it otherwise hidden in peoples' yards, visible. People are encouraged by the fact that their neighbours and people in their local community are producing food and are more likely to try it themselves. Having an online community (the facebook page) also gives people a forum for sharing knowledge.
By mapping locations and facilitating online discussion we are using online tools to help people do something real in the world and create connections that go beyond being 'friends' on Facebook . Sometimes, even the most welcoming community gardens can be a bit hard to get into, so we want people to feel confident about ask questions of each other, the culmination of the project in a dinner also enables these face-to-face relationships to happen.
Waverley Council (the client) acknowledges that most of the food eaten in its municipality is shipped from interstate or overseas. Even though this area (which includes Bondi, Tamarama, Clovelly, Centennial Park etc) is densely populated the council is keen to see as much food produced locally as it can. This is part of its commitment to sustainability and Grow It Local is a way for the council to encourage this in a way that has cultural salience and doesn't seem too much like a council project.
By connecting the growing with the eating, and making the whole project social we are inspiring not only growers but restauranteurs and chefs to become more creative with their menus and use produce that is locally grown and seasonally available. We are demonstrating not only that its possible to put on a spread using the produce from peoples' backyards, but that it will also give you kudos in your local community and maybe even a mention in the local paper. Culturally we would like to for high quality local produce that it beautifully prepared to be more desirable.
Initially the target for this project was 25 gardens registered in the Waverley Council area. We have had almost 300 gardens registered from all over Australia, from Slovakia, the UK, USA and New Zealand. We have no idea how these guys found out about the project,and we have even been contacted by Dutch and English food bloggers and magazines keen to write stories about the project.
It just goes to show that the concept can be rolled-out across other local council areas, both in Australia and potentially even internationally which is something that we really hoped would happen.
