5. Good Organic Gardening - September-October 2016 AvxHome.in

In the evening, whole families venture out onto
the streets, children pick produce or play games,
while neighbours interact with one another.
Urban Food Street | AMAZING GARDEN
our neighbourhood. This has led to efficiency
as people from the neighbourhood work
together in pursuit of a collective outcome
— towards the bigger-picture vision.”
The couple have essentially created a
formula for a sustainable transformation
of extraordinary social and environmental
significance. There’s the children’s garden,
where kids get together to plant food
and take ownership of the verge while
learning the vital skill of growing their own
food. The children play together as their
parents socialise.
It’s obvious when walking around that
Duncan knows every neighbour personally
and there is a real sense of social cohesion
in the neighbourhood. The socioeconomic
impacts of this endeavour are tremendous.
Duncan points out that there needs to be
an underlying knowledge of the total habitat,
Last year the neighbourhood
produced 900kg of bananas
including water, climate, landscape, crops and
soils. “Resources are always around us. You
just need to be aware of them.” Having grown
up on farms, he has learnt many skills and
ways to work with the environment.
The human resource cannot be
underestimated, too. “There is nothing
like learning from the observations of our
youngest or those of our oldest, who at
90-something knows it has been 25 weeks
since the banana tree in front of her house
flowered,” Duncan says.
Appreciating children’s hunger for
knowledge, UFS is actively engaged with a
local childcare centre, which frequently brings
children to enjoy the bounty of these streets.
According to Duncan, “They learn to use their
senses and can tell from the taste of the food
if it was grown at Food Street.”
Why not grow fruit on every street?
Tip
• Actions speak louder than words:
don’t spend weeks talking about
it — do it.
• Keep it simple.
• Share what you grow.
• Keep sustainability in mind: recycle,
compost, reuse.
• Co-operate with others and learn
from one another.
• Create an aesthetically pleasing
habitat for people and wildlife.
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