Ediblescapes

Ediblescapes A welcoming edible forest garden for food sovereignty, climate resilience and biocultural learning.

EdibleScapes is an urban ecological environmental community organisation, with a mission to support, promote and provide education about community based, ecologically sustainable food production and distribution. Where garden action meets biocultural food traditions — practical, friendly, and regenerative. Ediblescapes is a free, open-access community edible forest garden within Country Paradise Parklands (Nerang, Gold Coast). For more than 8 years, Ediblescapes has grown into a living, hands-on demonstration of permaculture, natural gardening, agroecology and syntropic edible forest garden practice — showing what a regenerative, multi-species community food forest can look like in public space. Stewarded by community volunteers, Ediblescapes supports food security, climate resilience and biodiversity through soil-building practices, shared learning, and welcoming participation. In 2026 we’re launching Biocultural Food Re-evolution — practising and sharing Indigenous and smallholder food traditions, supporting community food sovereignty through real, hands-on regenerative learning, and strengthening the nature-based, experiential side of Ediblescapes for visitors interested in cultural immersion and regeneration. We acknowledge the support of Cr Peter Young (City of Gold Coast, Division 5), City of Gold Coast teams, and the Queensland Government’s Department of the Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation.

02/10/2026

🌿 **National Recognition and Support: AFSA Stands with Ediblescapes**

We are deeply grateful to **Dr Tammi Jonas**, Focal Point for Farmers with the **Agroecology & Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA)**, for providing a formal letter supporting the continued recognition and protection of Ediblescapes.

Tammi visited the garden in October 2024 as part of AFSA’s Agroecology Roadshow. Drawing upon that direct experience, she describes Ediblescapes as a welcoming example of agroecology in practice—a place where food production, ecological care, culture, learning and community participation come together.

Tammi reflects that agroecology is more than a collection of farming techniques. It is also about relationships, shared knowledge, culture, community and the democratisation of food systems.

In her letter, she writes:

> “I strongly support the continued recognition and protection of Ediblescapes as a community agroecology, education and demonstration site—a bright beacon for agroecology.”

The image of a **beacon** is especially meaningful: not something standing apart from its surroundings, but a light that helps people orient themselves and find one another. The knowledge, relationships and possibilities cultivated within Ediblescapes can travel far beyond the physical boundaries of the garden.

Thank you, Tammi and AFSA, for recognising Ediblescapes’ contribution to the wider agroecology and food sovereignty movement—and its role in helping cultivate more just and resilient food systems.

Read the introduction and AFSA’s full letter in our **National Recognition and Support** section:

👉 https://www.ediblescapes.org/petition

The garden continues living, learning and connecting. 🌱

🌿 **National Recognition and Support for the Ediblescapes Living Garden**We have added a new **National Recognition and ...
28/09/2026

🌿 **National Recognition and Support for the Ediblescapes Living Garden**

We have added a new **National Recognition and Support** section to our public page about the future of Ediblescapes.

The section brings together two important contributions:

🌱 **Community Gardens Australia**

A formal letter from **Naomi Lacey, Director of Community Gardens Australia**, supporting the continued presence of Ediblescapes at Country Paradise Parklands. The letter draws upon the direct experience of CGA representatives who visited the garden during the 2024 National Community Gardens Gathering.

🌱 **Costa Georgiadis**

A spontaneous video reflection recorded during Costa’s visit on 27 September 2026. Having followed Ediblescapes from its earliest beginnings and witnessed its transformation over several years, Costa reflects on the garden’s living terraces, soil-building, water retention, ecological layers, edible diversity and public learning.

He describes this approach as:

> **“Engineering with the land—flexibility, suppleness, movement.”**

We are deeply grateful to Naomi, Community Gardens Australia and Costa for taking the time to recognise, experience and communicate the value cultivated within this living garden.

Read the CGA letter and watch Costa’s complete reflection:

👉 https://www.ediblescapes.org/petition

The future of Ediblescapes has not yet been determined. These informed voices help make visible what the garden has become and what it continues to offer the community.

The garden continues living, teaching and transforming. 🌱💚

🌿 **National Support for the Ediblescapes Living Garden**We are deeply grateful to **Community Gardens Australia** and i...
21/09/2026

🌿 **National Support for the Ediblescapes Living Garden**

We are deeply grateful to **Community Gardens Australia** and its Director, **Naomi Lacey**, for providing a formal letter supporting the continuation of Ediblescapes at Country Paradise Parklands.

Naomi and members of the Community Gardens Australia committee visited and experienced Ediblescapes during the **2024 National Community Gardens Gathering**. Their support is therefore grounded in a direct experience of the garden as a place of edible forest gardening, environmental stewardship, community participation and practical learning.

The letter recognises that Ediblescapes has significance beyond its immediate community:

> “Ediblescapes is a strong example of these principles in action.”

Community Gardens Australia also supports continued dialogue between Ediblescapes and the City of Gold Coast to secure a sustainable future for this important community asset.

We sincerely thank Naomi and Community Gardens Australia for recognising what has been cultivated here and for adding their national voice in support of the living garden.

Read the letter of support:

👉 https://www.ediblescapes.org/petition

The garden continues living, and the conversation continues. 🌱

🌱 **Micelio — Cultivating Creative Biodiversity**Some of you may remember **Micelio** from our earlier call for expressi...
16/09/2026

🌱 **Micelio — Cultivating Creative Biodiversity**

Some of you may remember **Micelio** from our earlier call for expressions of interest and from Gathering 2 of *In Defence of Ediblescapes*.

Since then, something has begun to grow.

We have now published a new **Micelio webpage**, where we are sharing this creative exploration as it develops — not as a finished project, but as a process of observing, imagining, experimenting, making and learning with the living garden.

At the centre of the current exploration is **Living Architecture** and an emerging idea we are calling:

# # # **Living Grove — Nurturing Culture**

What if we didn't simply build a structure and then landscape around it?

What if we began with young trees, light, water, soil, food plants and people — and cultivated a gathering place that could change and grow with them?

Living Grove explores a place where trees grow between and through a temporary human-made structure. As trunks thicken and branches extend, cross and join, the relationship between what was built and what is living can gradually change.

The architecture is therefore not imagined as something finished.

It is something that can be **cultivated through time**.

Our first ideas are already changing as we observe how trees grow, branch, cross, join and occupy space. We are creating three-dimensional digital models that allow us to imagine the place from inside and outside, exploring how young trees might grow through it and gradually become part of the space itself.

But Living Grove is not only about trees and structures.

**Nurturing Culture** is equally important.

We imagine a place for gathering around food and ecology; for sharing knowledge and stories; for tasting, learning, making and creating; and for experiencing relationships between people and the more-than-human living world.

In this sense, the grove is not simply something we grow.

**It is a place where we might grow together.**

Micelio is still young. Like mycelium beneath the soil, much of what it may become has yet to emerge.

We invite you to visit the new page, explore the work as it develops, and follow its cultivation.

🌿 **Micelio — Cultivating Creative Biodiversity**
**Living Grove — Nurturing Culture**

https://www.ediblescapes.org/micelio

07/09/2026

🌱 **2016–2026: Approaching Ten Years of Ediblescapes**

How did Ediblescapes become the living garden it is today?

We have added a new **Our History** section to the Ediblescapes website, tracing the evolution of Ediblescapes from the first **Living Art Food Forest concept in October 2016**, through the **2017 Geoglyph Earth Art Project**, to the dense and diverse living garden growing today.

As we approach **ten years since the original concept**, the history tells a story of continuous learning with the land — community-donated trees taking root through recycled-jeans pots, soil building and composting, food production during COVID, successive waves of tree planting, permaculture and agroecology, and the later development of syntropic forest-garden practices.

It is not a story of one gardening system replacing another. Each period has added another layer of practice, knowledge and ecological relationship.

Perhaps the most beautiful continuity is that the original Earth artwork was never replaced by the garden.

**It took root and became the garden.** 🌳

The new section also links to our archived website, preserving documentation of the garden and composting practices through its earlier stages.

👉 **Explore the Ediblescapes story, 2016–2026:**
https://www.ediblescapes.org/about-us

07/09/2026

🌿 **EVENT CANCELLATION NOTICE**

**In Defence of Ediblescapes — Gathering 4: Celebrating and Defending the Living Garden**, scheduled for **Sunday 13 September**, will no longer proceed.

The City of Gold Coast has offered Ediblescapes a temporary extension of its current licence until **27 November 2026**, allowing time for an internal report to be prepared and presented to Council regarding the garden’s longer-term future.

Although no permanent decision has yet been made, this extension creates a different moment—an opportunity to move from an urgent gathering in defence of the garden towards renewed dialogue, closer understanding and bridge-building between Ediblescapes, the City and the wider community.

For this reason, we have decided to cancel the all-day gathering and Vigil for Hope planned for 13 September.

We sincerely thank everyone who intended to attend, contribute an activity, bring a story or photograph, or simply stand alongside the living garden. Your care and support remain deeply valued, and the conversation about Ediblescapes’ future continues.

We warmly invite you instead to our next:

🌱 **Ediblescapes Community Biocultural Food Gathering**
📅 **Saturday 26 September 2026**

Together, we will continue exploring the living relationships between plants, food, soil, culture and community—and sharing the garden as a place of learning, creativity, nourishment and collective care.

The garden continues living, and we continue listening to what it teaches us. 🌿💚

🌱 **August 2026 — Ediblescapes 90 m² Garden Report is now published**What is a harvest — and who is it for?This month, t...
06/09/2026

🌱 **August 2026 — Ediblescapes 90 m² Garden Report is now published**

What is a harvest — and who is it for?

This month, that simple question took us beyond harvesting food for people. Flowering biomass was selectively cut before seed dispersal, while roots remained in the soil and the harvested material stayed within the garden — becoming food for living soil and material for the next cycle of growth.

August also invited us to observe water differently: how dense vegetation, canopy, roots and deep organic soil help retain moisture; what changes when we remove protective biomass; and how the garden asks us to respond to the consequences of our own interventions.

Two videos accompany this month's report: Javana gardening and speaking while working on 18 August, and a quiet end-of-month walk that invites you to enter the garden, listen and make your own observations.

Perhaps a Garden Report is not only about collecting measurements. Sometimes the living garden asks us to reconsider **what we thought we were measuring.**

🌿 **Read and watch the August Garden Report:**
August 2026 — Ediblescapes 90 m² Garden https://www.ediblescapes.org/garden-journal/august-2026

03/09/2026

🌱 **A small glimpse into the living cycles of Ediblescapes.**

Our August Garden Report follows how plants move from food and ground cover into biomass, soil life and the next generation of the garden.

🎥 Watch the Reel, and discover the full **August Garden Report** on YouTube:

[Watch the full August Garden Report](https://youtu.be/u4htvLbNVm4?si=CGNI2fwxoyvVVGTh&utm_source=chatgpt.com)

03/09/2026

🌱 **What happens when yesterday’s food plants become tomorrow’s soil?**

In the Ediblescapes garden, cutting a plant is not necessarily the end of its life in the garden. It can be the beginning of another cycle.

In our **August 2026 Garden Report**, Javana takes us through a section of the Ediblescapes Community Edible Forest Garden as we cut back plants before they go to seed, leave their roots underground, and return the green biomass directly to the garden.

Instead of becoming waste, this plant material helps protect and feed the soil, supporting fungi, worms and other soil life while gradually creating fertile ground for the next generation of edible plants.

As the older vegetation is selectively cut back, younger plants are given more space and light to emerge—including moringa, sweet leaf, mulberry, hibiscus and many others growing within this diverse garden community.

🌿 **What we harvest, cut and return today becomes part of what the garden can grow tomorrow.**

Watch the full **August Garden Report** on YouTube:

[Watch the August Garden Report on YouTube](https://youtu.be/u4htvLbNVm4?si=CGNI2fwxoyvVVGTh&utm_source=chatgpt.com)

31/08/2026

🌿 **A New Opportunity for Ediblescapes and the Living Garden**

The City of Gold Coast has offered Ediblescapes a temporary extension of its current licence agreement until **Friday 27 November 2026**, while an internal report is prepared for Council’s consideration regarding the garden’s longer-term future at Country Paradise Parklands.

This is not yet a permanent decision, nor do we see it as a victory over anyone.

We welcome it as an opportunity: time to listen, to strengthen relationships and to build bridges between the community, elected representatives and City officers around a shared purpose—the wellbeing of our community and the living environment that holds and shelters us all.

We sincerely thank **Cr Peter Young** for bringing the community petition before Council and advocating for Ediblescapes to remain while its future is properly considered. We also thank **all elected councillors who supported his motion**, opening the way for this period of further consideration.

Our deepest gratitude goes to the many people who signed the petition, spoke publicly, shared the campaign and contributed personal testimonies about what Ediblescapes has meant in their lives. Your experiences have helped make visible the garden’s educational, ecological, cultural and community value.

During this extension, we hope to present Ediblescapes as it truly lives: not as a fixed landscape, but as a dynamic relationship between people, soil, plants, water, insects, birds, microorganisms and seasons.

A living garden carries abundance and its own pulse. It moves through cycles of growth, flowering, harvest, decay and renewal. What may sometimes appear untidy is often life reorganising itself—feeding the soil and preparing the conditions for rebirth.

Over the coming months, we invite the City, councillors and the wider community to come closer, walk through the garden, listen to its stories and experience what has been cultivated here through many years of collective care.

May this time help us find common ground and imagine a future shaped not by division, but by cooperation—a future that generates good for the good living of the community and for the environment that contains us all beneath the great shelter of Mother Earth.

The garden continues living, and the conversation continues. 🌱

Address

74 Billabirra Crescent
Gold Coast, QLD
4211

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