Garnet, Tony and Mary are part of Green Square Growers (GSG), a community gardening group that cultivates beds at Joynton Avenue and Tote Park. According to Tony, Green Square is home to a very mixed demographic that includes busy full-time workers and their unemployed or retired counterparts, which means residents have varying amounts of time […]

Jennifer is the Culture and Pathways Manager at 107 Green Square, which is located at Joynton Avenue Creative Centre. She describes Green Square as an evolving and transitional place. ‘Green Square is really forming its community and the connections between what is here, what is happening and what is to come,’ she says. When Jennifer […]

This is an experiment we did with our colleague Sydney Newtown from the School of Built Environment at UTS. Syd is interested in how people experience the city and uses digital tech to monitor and record how people respond physiologically and behaviourally to experiences of the built environment. We went for a guided walk of […]

In October, we joined Virtual Nursery, an exhibition of 100 digital artefacts co-created by plant-lovers and their plants from across the world. Created through the Hundreds + Thousands (Multi-City): Germination workshops, the Virtual Nursery presents what happens when hundreds of humans and plants come together to commune and collaborate under the guidance of artists Daniel Kok (Singapore) and Luke George (Australia). Hundreds + Thousands […]

Most of us have gone on a COVID-safe approved walk around our neighbourhoods for a bit of freedom and fresh air during these past few months. However, have any of you caught yourself taking a few wild berries off a tree at your local park? Or maybe you might’ve caught yourself thinking about stealing an […]

We have been talking about foraging a lot lately, in this post, we share three recipes for our favourite foraged vegetable, Warrigal Greens. Ilaria’s Warrigal Greens and Dandelion sformato Wash and spin dry your greens. Cut them in a thin chiffonade. Put them in a pan with nothing and wilt for a few minutes. Poor […]

Urban foraging: Edible plants, caring for the environment and creating community Urban foraging is an idea that has been taken up by many celebrity chefs but for Alexandra Crosby(link is external) and IIaria Vanni(link is external), from the University of Technology Sydney it’s much more. Together they’ve established Mapping Edges(link is external), a transdisciplinary research studio that explores the […]

We were on community radio station Radio Skid Row discussing the ethics and environmentalism of foraging. The conversation is accessible here.

Rosemary in roundabouts, lemons over the fence: how to go urban foraging safely, respectfully and cleverly Shutterstock Alexandra Crosby, University of Technology Sydney and Ilaria Vanni, University of Technology Sydney Does anything beat the experience of finding a wild mulberry tree and stuffing a handful of fresh juicy berries in your mouth? Have you ever roasted […]

Gardens, verges and parks are sites where individuals can become involved in forms of ‘civic ecology’. We borrow this concept from Krasny and Tidball (2012, 2015a, 2015b), who in their book Civic ecology: Adaptation and transformation from the ground up concentrate on ‘hands-on stewardship practices that integrate civic and environmental values’ (2015a xviii). This definition is […]