By creating examples and evidence (scientific, financial, experiential, social proof, etc) that show how we can work together towards nature-positive, community action, and provide a model for others to follow, we can scale quickly with many autonomous, loosely-connected, localised projects throughout our cities and suburbs.
Every Shady Lanes collaboration connects a diverse set of autonomous people in a loosely connected network – each bringing different assets with them (eg time, money, skills, resources, organisations, connections).
They also bring different personal goals – these are complementary and need to be understood and respected throughout the project.
Good communication is needed to build and maintain positive relationships and trust as well as for practical information and administrative purposes.
This is how we scale across or scale out rather than the more common heirarchical view of scaling up.
Our pilot collaborative verge project, Banyo Verge Garden Project, at Banyo in Brisbane ran from October 2022 to July 2023.
The project aimed to help create job opportunities and new training opportunities for a local social enterprise, Nundah Community Enterprises Cooperative. We thank the inGrained Foundation for funding for this project.
Your Local Project
The Shady Lanes Project provides the framework and resources to help you run projects in any urban area where the council has a policy to allow verge gardening.
Each project much be locally-driven from within the community and localised to the needs of that community.
While ideally they should aim to have environmental, social, economic, and cultural benefits, each project will have a different emphasis depending on the location and participants.
Becoming part of our network will help you gather the people and connections you need to form collaborative projects.
To join us on this journey, please start with the free basic course on verge gardening about the social aspects of using this space.