AN innovative Sunshine Coast business is gearing up to help people turn their lawns into lunch, blitzing boring backyards into productive, lush, fresh food gardens.

As money pressures start to affect Coast households, many people are keen to try their hand at growing some of their own food at home and saving not only money and reducing fuel bills, but helping the environment too.*

But where do you start?

Edible Landscapes has made it their mission to help people on the Sunshine Coast become successful and productive backyard organic food producers.

Director Bruce Molloy, who established the popular Veggie Village community garden at Peregian Beach, has seen the demand for backyard veggie patches grow in the past 12 months.

“People are coming to Veggie Village wanting to know how to set up food production systems in their own backyards to help reduce household food bills,” Mr Molloy said.

“It seemed a natural progression from the community garden project at Veggie Village Peregian Beach to personalised home projects across the Coast, so we established Edible Landscapes to meet that demand.”

Edible Landscapes offers budding home gardeners a tailored package to suit their individual needs. Whether on a budget or wanting to do most of it themselves, right through to a complete set up, Edible Landscape’s team of organic gardeners and permaculture designers can help set up a veggie garden in an instant.

They will even supply the vegie beds. Raised tank gardens are popular with home food growers saving backache and improving soil drainage in some areas. Edible Landscapes supplies two heights of tank beds for easy access, rotational vegie beds to keep gardens productive, compost bays and no-dig garden kits.

And that’s not all they offer.

“Many people are starting their own backyard growing, but without systems such as composting, worm farming or chooks to build the soil for future crops a veggie garden will become depleted, the quality will be reduced and ultimately it will stop producing,” he said.

“It is disappointing to see a garden fail, which is why so many people are interested in getting some expert help in to get them started and on the road to continued success for the years ahead.”

Edible Landscapes believes anyone can grow their own vegetables, they just need to learn how.

“Whether you want to grow a little or a lot, it all helps reduce your household carbon footprint by cutting not only the food miles attached to your food, but also the amount of packaging you bring into your house. And by adding in chooks, a compost system or a worm farm, nothing goes to waste.”

Edible Landscapes also supplies raised tank beds for local schools to establish school gardens and offers vegetable garden set up services to retirement villages.

Edible Landscapes can be contacted on 5448 3679 or visit www.ediblelandscapes.com.au


* Recent research in Victoria showed that an average shopping basket of just 29 grocery items – including dairy, meat, fresh fruit and veg and processed goods – had travelled more than 70,000kms. That’s almost twice around the equator for just 29 items. The carbon emissions associated with the food coming into our homes are enormous and growing some of our food close to home is a way of significantly lowering these ‘food miles’ and thereby reducing our overall household carbon footprint. [www.ceres.org.au/projects/foodmiles.html]