This is the 6th year in the row of the Home Harvest edible garden trail and it shows. The conversation around urban food production and food security has more traction and is more normalised more than ever. It wasn’t too many years ago when people would look at me “funny” when I explained my work and passion to them, now they just go “oh yeah, of course we need to think about re-imagining our food system.”
This one day event is a collaboration with Eat Well Tasmania and Sustainable Living Tasmania and is supported by the City of Hobart. I ALWAYS bang on about the power and importance of collaboration – it’s how we’re more likely to make good things happen and increase the impact of the project as there’s more reach.
This year we had 16 gardens open their gates in and around Nipaluna/Hobart to show a wildly diverse range of food gardens. I think that’s my favourite thing about the day, that people get to see that a food garden can happen anywhere. Whether you’re renting, have a small paddock, a courtyard or a backyard, you can use the land (or balcony) you have to grow some of the food you need.
It never ceases to amaze me the diversity of people who turn up. There’s allllllll ages with fresh babies and beautiful older, wiser folks. We even had 93 year old Peter walk up our steep stairs to have a look at our place! It’s a wonderful reminder that gardening is for everyone, of all abilities, ages and experiences. In fact, it’s one of the reasons I love it so much, because it’s a neutral space that attracts folks all walks of life and we’re always able to find common ground. The threads of life that hold us all together can be found in the garden – they’re beneath our feet in the soil, in the petals of the sunflowers, hiding in the promise of seeds and flourishing in the ripe tomato – just asking to be eaten.
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It’s my active hope that Home Harvest keeps on keeping on, so that we can continue normalising all of our roles in crafting a vibrant, resilient food system. And also to keep remembering that cityscapes are still landscapes and that the earth beneath our feet is inherently good, it’s just waiting for us to breath some life back into it.
Thanks to Libby McKay from Eat Well Tasmania for all these wonderful photos!
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