Sometimes you get to work with great people on really inspiring projects and this is one of them, a proposed large scale, innovative urban farm at Glen Junor in the Gisborne area, north of Melbourne, working with Nigel Sharp and Odonata.

Designed by ourselves and Australian Ecosystems, the farm has the potential to produce large amounts of food for the community and local charities, and to show how new communities can become more food secure, sustainable and circular economy.

The community farm design includes large areas for plot holders, orchard, farmers market space, cafe, playground, education area, rainwater harvesting, composting areas and more. Stage one of the farm has been built and planted out and is bursting with produce. Very keen to see these beautiful assets in all new communities to improve future food security and deliver a raft of benefits - nutrition, exercise, social connection, reduced food bills. We produced a detailed briefing paper on the farm including design features, governance, revenue streams which can be read at the link below for those interested in a deep dive.

​Congrats to the Glen Junor team for thinking outside the square, it will be a project worth watching. Great work on the briefing paper

​We believe in the power of Community Gardens to enrich and engage a community, through shared spaces, goals, and food. At The Cape sustainable housing estate, we are working on creating a large ‘Community Farm’, which expands on the current community garden that has been a central feature of the development for the last 4 years. 

The existing community garden has been the centrepiece for community events. A highlight of the year is Passata Day, where the Summer’s bounty of tomatoes is processed and bottled into hundreds of gleaming jars of fresh red sauce. Food production, preparation and consumption is a core part of community building across all cultures. It makes sense that our housing estates and communities would benefit from being centred around a place of growing and cultivating food.

​Studies of community gardens also find that they promote stronger neighbourhood leadership, outreach and volunteerism. These spaces and communities also work to strengthen emotional bonds to the neighbourhood. As climate change impacts intensify and food prices increase, well designed community farms can reduce food bills for households. The physical layout of gathering spaces at The Cape’s farm, and diverse range of community activities to be hosted in the farm, is intended to similarly inspire leadership, outreach, and care for the community and beyond. 

Our previous blogpost detailed how we use Biodiversity-Sensitive Urban Design to enrich the landscape at The Cape, by creating a diversity of habitat areas and planting locally indigenous species. These landscape features allow for residents to nurture and connect to the local flora and fauna of Cape Paterson, regenerating cleared land previously used for cattle farming  so that it can once again support indigenous coastal species. Our nursery at Australian Ecosystems collected dozens of species with provenance to the local area, propagating them to tens of thousands of plants to be replanted in The Cape’s landscape. These locally indigenous plants have encouraged the proliferation of many species of birds and insects, as well as local native animals like the echidna and mobs of kangaroos. 

​As these plants encourage a liveable landscape for animals, birds, and insects; we have also sought to create a landscape that allows for people to produce their own food locally. Being sustainability-minded, The Cape sees the environmental benefits of empowering residents to grow their own food, including creating diverse, circular economy food systems, closing nutrient loops, reducing food miles and supporting lower footprint and healthy plant based diets. While maintaining a garden may be daunting for many people, growing your own food can be an inviting and rewarding way to engage with the outdoors, local climate, soil, plants and ecology. 

The household level farms also work in tandem with creation and use of compost in those homes, reducing food and organic waste to landfill. These farms will be supported by the existence of the larger community farm, which will be the source of vegetable seedlings, training, knowledge, mentoring and skill sharing as well as landscape plants.
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This unique combination of native plants for biodiversity, and high-production low-maintenance food gardens, highlight our passions for creating landscapes that benefit local ecology, minimise water consumption, and provide opportunities for people to connect to nature in a multitude of ways. The outcomes displayed at the residential and public landscapes at The Cape encapsulate the driving forces and priorities behind The Sustainable Landscape Company’s landscape design. 

The Sustainable Landscape Company is contributing to the delivery of The Cape – a zero emissions housing community in Cape Paterson, bursting with thriving wildlife and urban biodiversity.
 
The Cape estate overlooks Bass Strait near Phillip Island and is rapidly transforming a degraded former cattle station into thriving habitat site for residents as well as flora and fauna. A growing number of carbon neutral, solar powered, energy efficient homes are being built across the 230 dwelling estate, while the landscape team is simultaneously taking cleared paddocks previously covered in pasture grass and weeds, and creating wetland, habitat corridors and wild zones. A range of habitats are being designed and constructed, followed by planting programs that are installing hundreds of thousands of biodiverse coastal plants. The result is a rapid increase in wildlife numbers and diversity being recorded on the site in the past three years, with more than 95 species of birds recorded on site to date, as well a dramatic increase in the frog population, reptiles, insect diversity and an increase in observation of mammals on site including kangaroos, wombats, echidnas, microbats and swamp antechinus.

​​Working with The Cape, TSLC has designed and built the estate landscape including a shared path network connecting formalised parks, a community garden, and play spaces with informal sheltered viewing points and rest stops within the wetland and habitat corridors. Other biodiversity-focused initiatives include: ​​

​Plantings

• Collecting a diverse seed bank and curation of cuttings from locally indigenous plants from remnant vegetation in the area to grow hundreds of thousands of plants to provenance in TSLC's Nursery, to replant on site
• Restoring creek lines, wetlands and waterways throughout the estate
• Undertaking earthworks to transform steep-walled cattle dams into biodiversity wetlands, which creates a gentle gradient that is better suited for a wide diversity of indigenous aquatic and ephemeral plants to establish
• Installation of habitat rocks and logs to encourage basking and perching for native frogs and waterbirds
• Wetlands have been designed to filter stormwater runoff from roads, and planted out with a large diversity of indigenous plants
• Vegetated swales have been created along roadsides to capture and filter stormwater, helping with urban cooling and creating significant habitat
• Careful preparation of planting areas including installation of jutemat and mulch to suppress weed competition during plant establishment phase.
• Planting of all habitat areas with a high density of indigenous plants to allow for rapid establishment of plantings and to outcompete weeds
• Maintenance of revegetated areas by skilled and qualified staff to control pests and weeds as plantings establish, minimizing the use of herbicides
• Residents are encouraged to use local habitat plants in their own residential landscapes

Thanks to resident of The Cape, David Hartney, for the amazing images of animals onsite at the estate.
All other photos of landscape are credited to Will Hamilton-Coates, 2020. 

References:

• Garrad G & Bekessy S, 2015, 'Biodiversity Sensitive Urban Design: Creating urban environments that are good for people and good for nature', RMIT Centre for Urban Research, ggarrardresearch.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/bsud-final_reduced-size2.pdf

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