Costa wants more weeds

Costa and Kathy Heyman

Costa talking to the "Elders" of March Street Community Garden and as you can see, very comfortable on the purple caterpillar

The pizza oven tended by Alex

The evening was full of colour and fun

Some of the crowd of over a hundred

Costa was inspired to visit Newcastle's community gardens after seeing Jamie's "Placestory" about Villiers Street and the need to move. Jamie Pomfrett and Jenny Cameron have collaborated to bring the story of many of the community gardens into context. A garden is not just a garden. It's a place where friendships build, individuals use and sometimes abuse them in their own way, food is grown and shared. Community gardens of all types are keepers of the knowledge of growing food in a social setting. They are a buffer against the reduction in home-grown produce. Over 50% of Australia's food is now imported. Costa says we should all be like the weeds in a bitumen carpark, getting seeds germinating in tiny cracks, wriggling roots into the soil, forming mycorrhizal connections with soil fungi, breaking down the barriers to water and bringing back productivity and growth, regenerating the land. "Be weeds" he said!  He has an hour-long special on Australia Day - worth recording if you can't watch it on the day.

Urban farm in Detroit USA 

Here's an idea for Newcastle.
As Costa says, even if your garden is one plant in a pot you are a farmer. Putting the areas of all the big, little, guerilla and domestic gardens together there is a considerable mosaic of farm-land.  In Newcastle there is a large piece of degraded land between  Throsby Creek, the railway line and Chatham Road, Hamilton North. It is roughly triangular, about 450 Metres by about 170 Metres so it is approximately 38 Hectares.  Some nice old brick buildings on it and enormous potential for an urban farm. Preserve some of our built heritage and re-use it as a base for a community green space producing food, now there's an idea.