Alice has been a resident of Alexandria since 2020. She speaks mainly Italian at home. She has a strong sense of community, believing that belonging is about the small things: people who are interested in their neighbours, the local coffee place where they pronounce her Italian name correctly, and being one of the many local […]

Maria Fernanda Cardoso is a Sydney-based Colombian artist and gardener. In 2018, she created While I Live I Grow, a project referencing the former wetlands in Green Square that sustained the first industry in the area. The artwork, which is located at multiple sites around Green Square, is a living installation of Australian native bottle […]

One of the most unexpected green spaces in Rosebery is the verge along Princess Avenue. Here, native trees and grasses mix with flowers, edible herbs and succulents, and front gardens vary from the abundant to the minimalist and the manicured to the whimsy. But it wasn’t always this way. David bought his warehouse in the […]

Rosebery Honey is a home honey business run by Rosebery residents Fiona and Michael. It’s a small operation – the couple have beehives in their backyard and sell their honey from a stand out the front of their house. The business was born when a swarm of bees took up residence in their possum box, […]

Garnet, Tony and Mary are part of Green Square Growers (GSG), a community gardening group that cultivates beds at Joynton Avenue and Tote Park. According to Tony, Green Square is home to a very mixed demographic that includes busy full-time workers and their unemployed or retired counterparts, which means residents have varying amounts of time […]

Jennifer is the Culture and Pathways Manager at 107 Green Square, which is located at Joynton Avenue Creative Centre. She describes Green Square as an evolving and transitional place. ‘Green Square is really forming its community and the connections between what is here, what is happening and what is to come,’ she says. When Jennifer […]

Urban foraging: Edible plants, caring for the environment and creating community Urban foraging is an idea that has been taken up by many celebrity chefs but for Alexandra Crosby(link is external) and IIaria Vanni(link is external), from the University of Technology Sydney it’s much more. Together they’ve established Mapping Edges(link is external), a transdisciplinary research studio that explores the […]

We were on community radio station Radio Skid Row discussing the ethics and environmentalism of foraging. The conversation is accessible here.

Rosemary in roundabouts, lemons over the fence: how to go urban foraging safely, respectfully and cleverly Shutterstock Alexandra Crosby, University of Technology Sydney and Ilaria Vanni, University of Technology Sydney Does anything beat the experience of finding a wild mulberry tree and stuffing a handful of fresh juicy berries in your mouth? Have you ever roasted […]

Gardens, verges and parks are sites where individuals can become involved in forms of ‘civic ecology’. We borrow this concept from Krasny and Tidball (2012, 2015a, 2015b), who in their book Civic ecology: Adaptation and transformation from the ground up concentrate on ‘hands-on stewardship practices that integrate civic and environmental values’ (2015a xviii). This definition is […]