Victoria Point’s award-winning garden has taken on a tasty new layer, with residents and a First Nations-led social enterprise joining forces to plant an edible indigenous garden bed in the heart of Docklands.
The new bed, installed on November 24, has been created in partnership with GROW Gardens, the social enterprise recently featured in sibling publication CBD News for its work providing horticultural jobs and training for young Aboriginal Victorians.
Backed by a federal Stronger Communities grant, the project transforms a previously ornamental central bed in Victoria Point’s communal garden into a productive space filled with native edible species.
Victoria Point resident Dr Janette Corcoran said the planting session was a milestone in a much bigger greening journey for the building.
“We were blessed with good weather on Monday,” she said. “It wasn’t the kind of freezing Sunday, and it wasn’t the windy Tuesday, so it was brilliant. We’re taking that as a great omen.”
Residents have already converted the once-grey podium into a lush, shared garden, installing around 10 raised “food cubes” – the same modular beds used at the nearby SkyFarm rooftop – growing lettuces, herbs and other everyday produce.
But Dr Corcoran said the central bed had long been earmarked for something more ambitious.
“We were really keen to make that central bed productive as well,” she said. “It was green, but circumstances converged where there was a small grant coming from the federal government, so we applied specifically for an edible native garden.”
“That allowed us to have a little bit of petty cash to engage somebody who really knew about it, rather than the residents doing it themselves and kind of learning by failing.”
Two Victoria Point residents first encountered GROW Gardens at a City of Melbourne native gardening information session and came back impressed.
“They said, ‘there’s this guy, he’s doing this amazing stuff,’” Dr Corcoran said. “So, we got him to come on site. He looked at the orientation, because it’s always a challenging area here with wind and all of that, and he was really excited about it.”
The result is a carefully planned edible bed featuring a mix of native saltbushes, local berries, finger limes and other bushfoods suited to Docklands’ exposed conditions. While it will take time to fully establish, residents are already embracing the next phase of their garden.
“The whole idea is that we want it to be productive,” Dr Corcoran said. “People can come down – we’ve got lettuces and other mainstream herbs – so people just pick a bit for their meal. That’s the whole idea.”
Despite the planting day falling on a Monday, she said a solid group of residents turned out to help.
“People were keen enough to come down and get their hands dirty and be part of planting that bed,” she said. “It was a fun day – just a couple of hours – and the crew they had, three young women, just worked really well and were able to get it all set up very quickly.”
Dr Corcoran said one of the most valuable aspects of partnering with GROW Gardens was their ongoing involvement and education focus.
“We really liked the idea of the social enterprise – people who it means something to, to be able to plant this sort of garden and who are really interested in seeing how it will grow,” she said.
“They’ve got QR codes which link to information on each of the different plants, and they’ve been coming back and running information sessions for residents on how to harvest and how to use this food. So, it’s not just ‘here’s another project’ – they’re super keen to see how it goes and to keep in contact.”
For Victoria Point, which only last year celebrated the opening of its transformed podium garden, the edible indigenous bed is another step in turning a once-concrete concourse into a living, learning landscape for the whole Docklands community. •
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