Street trees are an obvious way to reduce urban heat. I’ve written about my street tree and how the native verge garden around it increased biodiversity and helped the young tree thrive. And I measured the ground temperatures to show the cooling effects of the shade from this tree and its larger neighbour. Recent conversations have […] Read more

(This is based on a presentation for the Banyo Verge Garden Pilot Project in March 2023) This month, the World Wildlife Foundation and Doctors for the Environment launched a new report about the urgent need to address urban heat and the vital part that street trees play in cooling our suburbs.   This isn’t a […] Read more

As part of the Banyo Verge Garden Pilot Project, we held a workshop on the connections between verge gardening, greening the streets, and active transport. It led to some lively discussions and clarifications. We started by considering the many different people with an interest in whether we have more street trees, more shade, and more […] Read more

I started 2023 feeling more confident than I have for some time. The COP15 – Biodiversity COP – and recent movements from the new Australian government was encouraging. Maybe it wasn’t everything that everybody wanted but it was a significant change. And biodiversity is firmly on the agenda both globally and locally. Locally, we’re making […] Read more

As part of their verge garden project, ACF Community Brisbane Northside held a Verge Gardens for Advocacy session in November. We started with a recap from last month of all the users and uses of this space. Some of the many users and uses of the nature strip or verge in front of our homes. […] Read more

In October 2022, ACF Community Brisbane Northside launched their Verge Garden Project as part of the Australian Conservation Foundation’s Save Our Big Backyard campaign. This is a flexible and doable group activity that raises community awareness and knowledge about the importance of biodiversity and native habitat in our suburbs as well advocate to protect regional and remote areas. We started by thinking of all […] Read more

On Sunday 12 October, ACF Community Brisbane Northside launched their Verge Garden Project that aims to combine increasing biodiversity in their region with advocacy as part of the Australian Conservation Foundation Save Our Big Backyard campaign. We started by thinking of all of the different stakeholders, users, and uses of this space. Here are just some… Does […] Read more

Several conversations over the past few weeks have got me thinking about car parking and verge gardens. Space for car parking is one of those topics that can quickly turn a discussion about verge gardening into an argument on social media and a neighbourhood dispute on the ground. But it’s not as simple a topic […] Read more

The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) has released a report, Temperature check: Greening Australia’s warming cities, by Monash University researchers, which shows increasing urban vegetation will become essential for our three largest cities – Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane – to reduce serious heatwave impacts by 2060-2080. I did an interview with ABC (story here) about the part […] Read more

A few years ago some residents at Buderim on the Sunshine Coast transformed their streets into food gardens. It was featured on Gardening Australia and no doubt the participants and supporters saw this publicity as a major boost to their urban food growing movement. Then the Council received a complaint and ordered the gardeners to […] Read more

In our third survey, in March 2020, we looked at pedestrians and how they felt about nature strips and verge gardens. This is very important because nature strips are public land and if a member of the public complains about your verge garden, you may need to remove it. Here is what we found… Everybody […] Read more

In our second survey, in February 2020, we looked at our expectations of councils. Many thanks to all who participated. This is what we found. Council Policies Council policies vary widely. Some are basic guidelines, others require formal applications, landscape plans, and payment for permits for the most basic verge garden. Readers could select as […] Read more

There is a tendency to think of native strips or verges as just another form of public greenspace like parks and community gardens. And a less important one, at that. But this space – between the front property line and the road – has some special features that set it apart from other public land. […] Read more

In our first survey, in January 2020, we looked at why people had, or didn’t have verge gardens. Thank you to all who participated. This is what we found. The reasons for having a verge garden Readers could select as many reasons as they wished. The top reason selected was because it looks better, equal […] Read more