words by Shannon Foster, D’harawal eora Knowledge Keeper & registered Sydney Traditional Owner One of my earliest memories of learning culture from my D’harawal eora father, was about understanding plants and what you could and couldn’t eat. I was always amazed to realise that you could actually live off the gardens and earth around you? […]

Jess Miller is an Alexandria resident and a former councillor with the City of Sydney. The first thing that comes to mind when Jess thinks about Green Square is a place in transition. It’s home to a wide variety of civic ecologies activities, from grassroots to city-led initiatives. The diversity of ecological activity within the […]

Richard Watson is the NSW State Manager of charity food rescue organisation OzHarvest, which is based in Alexandria. Founded 18 years ago by social entrepreneur Ronnie Kahn, OzHarvest ‘rescues’ food that would otherwise wind up in landfill and redistributes it to 400 charities who make it available to their customers and clients. There’s enough food […]

Astra is the Coordinator Local Connections within the Community Programs department at Waverley Council, a role that includes managing gardening initiatives in public spaces across the LGA. There is a community garden hub in Bondi Junction, 15 shared gardens in parks and reserves as well as numerous verge gardens. It’s been encouraging to receive so […]

Alice has been a resident of Alexandria since 2020. She speaks mainly Italian at home. She has a strong sense of community, believing that belonging is about the small things: people who are interested in their neighbours, the local coffee place where they pronounce her Italian name correctly, and being one of the many local […]

Maria Fernanda Cardoso is a Sydney-based Colombian artist and gardener. In 2018, she created While I Live I Grow, a project referencing the former wetlands in Green Square that sustained the first industry in the area. The artwork, which is located at multiple sites around Green Square, is a living installation of Australian native bottle […]

Climate scientist Maquel Brandimarti has lived in a cottage on Belmont Street for the past 10 years. An avid gardener, Maquel recently completed a PhD on kangaroo ecologies at the University of Sydney. In her back garden there are chickens in a coop and a resident ringtail possum. The garden is shaded by a big […]

One of the most unexpected green spaces in Rosebery is the verge along Princess Avenue. Here, native trees and grasses mix with flowers, edible herbs and succulents, and front gardens vary from the abundant to the minimalist and the manicured to the whimsy. But it wasn’t always this way. David bought his warehouse in the […]

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 […]

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 […]