Food in the landscape

​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. 

The landscape at The Cape is devoted to two distinct yet complementary planting types—the native plants for local biodiversity, and food production gardens.

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 food gardens we have created in this community are not confined to the Community Farm, as many residents have vegetable patches within their own backyards as well. Many of these residential landscapes also incorporate both native plantings and food-growing. Both landscape and garden types support each other throughout the year. Native insects and birds provide pollination in the food garden, and flowering plants in the food garden provide a source for food and nectar during times when native plants are not in flower.

​TSLC regularly installs Biofilta Foodcubes into these gardens, which allows residents to grow large amounts of produce with relatively low maintenance. The Foodcube is a wicking bed with a large water reservoir, which bottom-feeds water to the plants as they require. This means that the garden needs to be watered much less than a conventional vegie patch, with the added bonus of reducing water consumption as there is less water lost through evaporation.

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.