Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change - weADAPT

Melbourne Food ForestA Melbourne gardener, known locally for his methodical and systematic approach, hasbuilt a backyard food forest, and has documented his progress: including speciesselection, plantings, climatic events and yields.This gardener was motivated to create a food forest because of the increased‘scepticism towards permaculture’ from horticulturalists in general:There was just too much doubt, too much dissenting opinion, about whether itcan really work. So I said, enough is enough, it’s time to call their bluff, and buildsomething that shows it really does work. [Backyard gardener andpermaculturalist, Melbourne].As a working scientist (toxicologist), he set out to use his backyard as an experiment,to document in detail everything he did, and all his yields, in order to demonstrate thatbio-intensive gardening of this sort could be highly productive:I have no time or space for wild speculation. For me, my food forest was really toprove that the concept worked. As a scientist, if something’s scientific, thatmeans it’s repeatable [Backyard gardener and permaculturalist, Melbourne].He built his food forest on the ‘leached and lifeless’ soil of his 80m 2 back garden duringthe winter of 2008. He calls his method ‘backyard orchard culture’. Based around thecareful selection and strategic siting of a range of different tree species (31), it isinterspersed with numerous varieties of berries (21), herbs (90) and other perennials,with some space left for annual vegetables. Consistent with the permaculture foodforest technique, he chose early, mid- and late fruiting varieties, because ‘this givesextended seasonal cropping – instead of having one tree produce a glut of fruit all overa few weeks, you can extend your cropping [over several months].’In terms of yields, he has documented approximately 200kgs per year, split 60 – 5 –35% between the trees, berries and vegetables. However, all his trees are a few yearsaway from maturity with a third not yet producing. He speculates that 500kg a year isfeasible once all the trees have reached maturity. Nevertheless, his current yieldequates to 14 tonnes per acre.The South Melbourne CommonsThis is the result of a unique collaboration between the Catholic Archdiocese of SouthMelbourne, and Friends of the Earth. Located in South Melbourne, in the premises of aretro-fitted 19 th century Catholic girls’ school, the South Melbourne Commons is amulti-functional site combining 900m 2 of communal vegetable beds, a wholefoods café,a food co-op, a hall for events and community hire, and a social enterprise (pre-schoolplay group). One of the volunteers commented that this project involved ‘a number ofinter-related and inter-connected things happening at one site, all of which wouldcontribute to a self-sustaining venture’.CERES Fair Food ProjectAn off-shoot of the CERES Environmental Education Park in Brunswick, the CERESFair Food Project was described as an outstanding example of community-led urbanagriculture in Melbourne operating over the last thirty years. CERES Fair Food is aUrban food security, urban resilience and climate change 124