Ediblescapes

**IN DEFENCE OF EDIBLESCAPES — ISSUES AND RESPONSES UPDATED**

The Ediblescapes public-information page has been updated with detailed responses to four matters raised in the City’s correspondence:

• Biochar maker—not a waste incinerator
• White Ginger in two managed public landscapes
• The shallow water channel responding to recurrent shelter flooding
• Temporary storage within the existing community shelter

Each response presents the historical context, Ediblescapes’ explanation, corrective actions already taken and supporting photographic evidence.

Our purpose is not to blame individual officers. It is to help establish a complete, balanced and properly contextualised public record so that the future of the living garden can be considered fairly.

Read the updated **In Defence of Ediblescapes — Issues and Responses**:

https://www.ediblescapes.org/petition -3

Please read and share with others who care about the future of the Ediblescapes living garden.

**IN DEFENCE OF EDIBLESCAPES — WHY A COMPLETE RECORD MATTERS**

Ediblescapes has received further correspondence from the City concerning the Notice of Non-Renewal.

The City states that the decision was not made by an individual officer, but followed consideration involving several relevant City officers across the organisation. The City has also confirmed that it does not presently intend to place the Notice on hold.

We acknowledge that several officers may have participated. However, our concern is whether everyone involved received complete, current and balanced information.

Several matters referred to in the non-renewal decision originated during Ediblescapes’ earlier years under the Country Paradise Parklands sublicence or during discussions before the first direct Deed of Licence in June 2024. These matters had already been discussed, explained or addressed before the direct licence was established.

For more than a year following the later licence renewal, Ediblescapes received no communication from Parks and Recreation identifying these historical matters as continuing or unresolved concerns.

Councillor Peter Young’s intervention may now provide an opportunity for the elected Council to request a new review. We welcome that possibility.

However, a review can only be fair and meaningful if Councillors receive the complete and updated history—not simply the same administrative account repeated without Ediblescapes’ explanations, evidence, subsequent actions and progress.

We are therefore asking that any report presented to Council:

• includes Ediblescapes’ submissions and supporting documents;
• distinguishes historical matters from conduct during the current Deed of Licence;
• identifies the information relied upon in reaching the decision; and
• gives Ediblescapes an opportunity to correct factual inaccuracies or missing context.

This is not about blaming individual officers. It is about ensuring that elected Councillors can consider the future of the living garden using a complete, balanced and properly contextualised record.

We will continue updating the public correspondence and supporting evidence here:

https://www.ediblescapes.org/petition

With gratitude to everyone who has signed the petition, shared testimony and expressed support for the Ediblescapes living garden.

**Ediblescapes Inc.**

# The Same Plant in Two Managed Public Landscapes?

# # White Ginger at Ediblescapes and the Broadbeach Cultural Centre

Photographs taken in February and March 2024 show white ginger (*Hedychium coronarium*) flowering within an approximately one-square-metre area at the Ediblescapes Living Garden. Following direction from a City biosecurity officer, Ediblescapes removed the plant and provided the material to the officer for appropriate disposal.

During the NENA Conference, held from 10 to 12 October 2025, plants with similar foliage and white flowers were observed in landscaped garden beds beside the renovated Broadbeach Cultural Centre, formerly the Albert Waterways Community Centre.

On 23 August 2026, plants strongly resembling the same species were documented in three landscaped locations around the Cultural Centre. They were not flowering at the time, so their identity should be formally confirmed. However, their foliage and growth habit appear strongly consistent with the white ginger previously documented at Ediblescapes.

This comparison is not presented to accuse an individual officer, facility or contractor. The identity and planting history of the Cultural Centre plants should first be confirmed. Nor is this about comparing the quantity of plants at the two locations.

Rather, these observations raise constructive questions:

**How consistently are environmental-w**d classifications and biosecurity directions applied across different forms of City-managed or City-associated land?**

**Why might a plant require removal from a community agroforest while apparently remaining within a maintained ornamental public landscape?**

**Are management decisions based only on species identity, or do they also consider location, ecological behaviour, containment, reproduction and demonstrated risk?**

Ediblescapes complied with the direction it received. This comparison invites a transparent explanation and a more contextual conversation about how biosecurity responsibilities are interpreted across public landscapes.

# # Beyond the Fixed Landscape: Weeds, Migration and Living Intelligence

Australian government and environmental-management frameworks commonly distinguish between native, introduced, exotic and invasive species. These classifications are important. Some introduced plants spread aggressively, displace vulnerable species, alter fire behaviour, damage waterways or create other serious ecological consequences.

However, the word **w**d** can also carry an incomplete understanding of how living landscapes develop.

It may suggest that nature once existed as a complete and permanently arranged collection of plants and animals—and that ecological movement and transformation began only with European colonisation and subsequent human migrations.

The Earth was not created with every forest, grassland and species permanently attached to its present location. Landscapes have always changed.

Plants, animals, fungi and microorganisms have moved, settled, adapted and transformed ecosystems through wind, water, birds, ocean currents, fire, climatic cycles, volcanic activity and tectonic change. Human communities have also participated in these processes through gathering, cultivation, burning, travel, exchange, settlement and care.

For tens of thousands of years, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have lived within and actively shaped Australian landscapes through sophisticated systems of ecological knowledge and custodianship. Australian nature at the time of European invasion was not a landscape without people. It had been composed through long relationships between human and more-than-human life.

European colonisation nevertheless introduced ecological change of extraordinary speed and scale: extensive land clearing, grazing, mining, altered waterways, changed fire regimes and the movement of plants and animals across biogeographical boundaries. Many of these introductions caused—and continue to cause—substantial ecological harm.

Recognising that ecosystems are dynamic does not mean that every introduced species is harmless or that invasive-species management is unnecessary.

It means that ecological judgement should not rest on origin alone.

A plant’s ecological meaning also depends upon:

* how it behaves in a particular landscape;
* whether it spreads beyond the place where it is managed;
* what relationships it forms with soil, water, insects, animals and other plants;
* whether it displaces or supports other living communities;
* what risks or benefits it produces;
* how people contain, harvest or care for it; and
* what can be learned through sustained observation.

A plant may be food within one cultural relationship, habitat within another ecological relationship and a serious threat in a different landscape. These realities can coexist.

The question is not simply whether a plant was here before or arrived later, but:

**What is it doing here, within this particular living system, under these particular conditions of care or neglect?**

# # The Intelligence Present in the Garden

This conversation involves more than one form of intelligence.

There is human intelligence: scientific research, Indigenous ecological knowledge, cultural memory, gardening experience, professional practice and public administration.

There is also developing artificial intelligence, which can help gather literature, connect ideas and communicate across communities. Ediblescapes calls its collaborating AI agent **EdibleAI**. Its role is not to replace ecological observation or claim authority over the garden. It helps Ediblescapes gardeners interpret information, articulate their experience and communicate their relationships with the wider community.

Beneath both is a deeper and more primary intelligence: the intelligence expressed by living biology itself.

It is present in the adaptive behaviour of roots, exchanges between fungi and plants, vegetation’s responses to disturbance, the movement of insects and birds, the succession of species and the continuous transformation of soil.

This living intelligence does not speak through government classifications or human language. It becomes perceptible through careful presence, observation, experience and relationship.

The Ediblescapes Living Garden offers a place where different forms of knowledge can meet: regulation and scientific evidence, Indigenous and cultural food knowledge, gardening experience, digital interpretation and the testimony of the living system itself.

From this perspective, **w**d** should not be treated only as an unquestionable identity permanently attached to a plant. It should also begin a contextual conversation:

**What is this plant doing in this place?**

**What relationships is it forming?**

**What harm requires prevention?**

**What food, habitat, knowledge or ecological function might be overlooked?**

**Can it be responsibly contained and harvested, or must it be removed?**

These questions do not weaken environmental responsibility. They deepen it by joining precaution and regulation with consistent administration, careful observation, cultural knowledge and the changing intelligence of life.

# # 🌱 CALL FOR EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST

# # # **Micelio — Cultivating Creative Biodiversity**

**In 2017, we responded creatively to a possibility.**
**In 2026, we invite the creative community to respond to what that possibility has become.**

Nearly ten years ago, before Ediblescapes became the Community Edible Forest Garden we know today, we used **Earth Art as a way of planting a future**.

For the 2017 Botanical Garden Festival, mulch and recycled jean pots were used to paint a large **Geoglifo** across the landscape at Country Paradise Parklands.

The work drew from the cultural influence of geoglyphs from the Pacific coast of the Central Andean region and became more than an artwork.

It became part of the strategy for initiating a **Public Edible Landscape Gardens Project**.

🌱 Trees were planted.
🌱 Soil developed.
🌱 People came.
🌱 Knowledge was shared.
🌱 Relationships grew.

The artwork gradually disappeared into the landscape — and **Ediblescapes emerged from it.**

Now, as Ediblescapes approaches its tenth year and faces uncertainty about its continuation, we want to respond again through **creative action**.

Not only by protesting what could be lost, but by **planting seeds for what could come next**.

This is the beginning of:

# # # **Micelio — Cultivating Creative Biodiversity**

Micelio invites artists, photographers, filmmakers, storytellers, designers, scientists, gardeners, educators, cultural knowledge holders, students, digital creators — and people who may not call themselves any of these things — to form a diverse creative group around the living garden.

Together we will explore:

**What has the original Earth Artwork become after nearly ten years of ecological and community growth?**

And:

**How can we creatively express the living relationships between soil, plants, food, culture, biodiversity, community and care that exist here today?**

Your response might become a photograph, drawing, installation, story, sound work, video, performance, scientific observation, digital experiment — or something we have not yet imagined.

**Come to the start-up gathering.**
**Become part of the Micelio creative group.**
**Make your creative response your statement in defence of Ediblescapes — and your participation in its future.**

📅 **Saturday 29 August 2026**
🕤 **9:30 am–12:30 pm**
📍 **Ediblescapes Community Forest Garden**
Country Paradise Parklands, Nerang

No particular artistic background is required.

Bring your practice, your knowledge, your curiosity, or simply **your own way of seeing**.

🌱 **In 2017, we planted an artwork into the landscape.**
**Nearly ten years later, we invite you to create with the living artwork it became.**

**Micelio — Cultivating Creative Biodiversity**
*Creativity, like biodiversity, becomes stronger through relationships.*

💚 **In Defence of Ediblescapes — planting futures, not endings.**

https://www.facebook.com/share/1HQkRzq1X7/

🌿 **In Defence of Ediblescapes — Community Update and Gratitude**

At today’s gathering at Ediblescapes, we shared an update on the City’s decision not to renew the garden’s licence and discussed the next stage of the community response.

We also collected signed hard-copy petitions. Later today, during the Country Paradise Parklands tenants’ meeting, the petition was formally passed to Councillor Peter Young.

With the support of the community behind him, Cr Young intends to bring this matter before the elected Council and seek a Council review of the administrative decision concerning the Ediblescapes licence.

If the motion is supported, it will begin a formal Council review of the case. We remain hopeful that this process will lead to a fair and positive outcome for the Ediblescapes living garden.

On behalf of the Ediblescapes Management Committee and core team, I wish to express our most sincere gratitude to everyone who has:

🌱 Signed the petition
🌱 Shared your concerns
🌱 Offered your testimony and personal experiences
🌱 Commented on and shared our Facebook posts
🌱 Stood with Ediblescapes during this important moment

Your voices demonstrate that Ediblescapes is not simply a garden managed by one organisation. It is a living community place, created through years of shared learning, voluntary care and relationships.

Thank you for standing with the living garden. We will continue to keep the community informed as the Council process develops.

With sincere gratitude,

**Jorge Cantellano**
On behalf of the Ediblescapes Management Committee and core team

# When the Licence Ends but the Living Garden Remains

# # A Gold Coast Question with Australian Significance

Ediblescapes is facing a local decision, but the questions arising from it extend beyond one garden, one community organisation and one council.

Across Australia, communities invest years of voluntary work, knowledge and care in creating community gardens, food forests and living educational landscapes on public land.

Trees develop deep roots. Soil regenerates. Fungal and biological networks form. Habitat expands. Cultural food knowledge is shared. Children, families, gardeners, educators and visitors develop relationships with plants, food and place.

Over time, what began as a community project can become a valuable living ecosystem.

But what happens when the administrative licence ends while the living garden remains?

**Who becomes responsible for protecting the ecological, educational and community value that citizens have created on public land?**

For the City of Gold Coast, the immediate question is:

**If Ediblescapes Inc. is no longer permitted to continue as the licensed community steward, what does the City intend to do with the valuable living garden that remains?**

# # The Concern About What Comes After the Founders

Councils may reasonably be concerned about the long-term future of community gardens.

Many community projects begin through the energy and commitment of a small number of enthusiastic people. When those original leaders eventually move on, participation may decline. Council can then inherit responsibility for an unmanaged site and may need to commit public resources to maintaining or dismantling what remains.

This is a legitimate governance and succession question.

However, a mature community agroforest presents a different situation from infrastructure that can simply be removed at the end of a project.

An agroforest is not merely a collection of garden beds, structures or movable plants. It is a place-based living system whose value develops through time.

Its trees, perennial food plants, regenerated soil, roots, fungi, insects, birds and other ecological relationships become integrated with the land. Even if some individual plants could be transplanted, the living system as a whole cannot meaningfully be relocated without being dismantled or destroyed.

The issue is therefore not whether conventional community gardens or community agroforests are more valuable. Both can make important contributions. The distinction is that a mature agroforest requires a different understanding of permanence, succession and public responsibility.

# # A Garden Serving More Than Its Members

A community agroforest does not serve only the members of the organisation caring for it.

It can serve the wider regional community through:

* community education in food security and food insecurity;
* practical learning about climate impacts on local food systems;
* demonstrations of subtropical and climate-resilient food production;
* biocultural relationships between people, plants and food;
* the sharing of edible-leaf knowledge and other accessible food solutions;
* cultural exchange and intergenerational learning;
* habitat and ecological connectivity; and
* direct public experiences of regenerative land care.

It also supports a more-than-human living network: birds, insects, fungi, soil organisms and the many other beings that participate in the ecosystem.

Its accumulated value is therefore ecological, educational, cultural and civic—not only horticultural.

# # From Founder Dependency to Successive Stewardship

The departure of an original founder or licensed organisation should not automatically lead to the destruction of the living system.

Instead, it should prompt a different set of questions:

**How can the garden’s knowledge be transferred?**

**What governance arrangements could support successive stewardship?**

**Could schools, community organisations, educators, gardeners, researchers and public authorities participate in a wider care and learning network?**

**How can the living garden continue serving the public without depending permanently upon one founder, one association or one administrative agreement?**

These questions recognise Council’s legitimate concern about future responsibility while also recognising that dismantlement is not the only possible response.

The challenge is to develop models of **succession without ecological destruction**.

# # The Continuing Role of Ediblescapes Inc.

Ediblescapes Inc. continues to seek a review of the City’s decision and remains committed to caring for the garden.

If the association is eventually required to conclude its licensed on-site stewardship, it will not cease to exist. Its role can evolve.

Through the **Ediblescapes Learning Network**, the association can continue developing educational resources, interpretive frameworks, community relationships and regional learning opportunities concerning food security, climate-resilient food systems, biocultural food knowledge, community agroforestry and edible-leaf solutions.

The physical garden would remain rooted in its place. The learning network could carry its knowledge, relationships and educational purpose into the wider Gold Coast community and beyond.

This distinction is important:

**The administrative relationship may change, but the association’s educational mission and the living garden’s public value do not simply disappear.**

# # Living Civic Infrastructure

Ediblescapes invites consideration of a broader concept: the community agroforest as **living civic infrastructure**.

Like other forms of public infrastructure, it is created to serve the community. Unlike conventional built infrastructure, it is alive. It grows, adapts and becomes more ecologically complex and valuable through time.

Its care cannot be understood only through short-term maintenance schedules or the duration of a licence. Its governance must account for living processes, accumulated community knowledge and responsibilities extending beyond a single administrative term.

For the Australian community, the wider question is:

**How should community-created living gardens and agroforests on public land be recognised, governed and protected when their founding organisations or administrative agreements change?**

This is not a question for councils alone. It belongs to community gardeners, Traditional Custodians, agroforestry practitioners, educators, food-security organisations, ecologists, planners, researchers and communities throughout Australia.

Ediblescapes is a local living garden, rooted on the Gold Coast.

But the questions it raises belong to communities across Australia:

**When the licence ends but the living ecosystem remains, what should happen next?**

**Who will care for what the community has created?**

**And how can we enable stewardship to change without destroying the living legacy?**

# # What will happen to the Ediblescapes Living Garden?

If Ediblescapes Inc. is required to conclude its role as the licensed community steward, what does the City intend to do with the valuable living garden that will remain on Council-controlled public land?

Ediblescapes is not a collection of movable objects. It is a place-based agroforestry ecosystem developed through nearly a decade of community care. Its deeply rooted trees, regenerated soil, biodiversity, cultural food plants and ecological relationships cannot meaningfully be relocated without destroying the living whole.

Ediblescapes Inc. continues to seek a review of the decision and remains committed to caring for the garden.

Whatever the outcome, the association will not cease to exist. Through the **Ediblescapes Learning Network**, it will continue its strategic community-education role across the Gold Coast, focusing on food security, climate impacts on local food systems, responses to food insecurity, biocultural food knowledge, community edible forest gardening and edible-leaf solutions.

The question is therefore larger than the renewal of one licence:

**If the community organisation that created and understands this living garden is no longer permitted to care for it, who will accept responsibility for protecting, maintaining and enabling its continuing educational and community value?**

The living garden cannot simply be moved. Its future deserves a clear public answer.

UPDATE: RECREATION SERVICES MAINTAINS ITS POSITION

Ediblescapes has today received a further response from City of Gold Coast Recreation Services concerning administrative-action complaint reference 14844681.

Recreation Services has confirmed that:

• the decision involved a number of City officers rather than one individual officer;

• the City considers that the Deed of Licence provides no right of appeal against non-renewal;

• the Notice of Non-Renewal remains in effect;

• the requirement to vacate by 14 September 2026 has not changed;

• requests for access to City records must proceed through the relevant Right to Information process; and

• the City does not presently intend to place the Notice on hold.

This response does not alter the separate Council petition process.

The City Secretary has confirmed that the Ediblescapes petition meets the formal requirements and will be presented by Councillor Peter Young at the Council meeting on Tuesday, 25 August 2026.

The petition asks the elected Council to receive a report enabling a review of the administrative decision and to hold the Notice to vacate in abeyance until Council has made its formal decision.

Ediblescapes remains committed to a peaceful, respectful and evidence-based process. We continue to seek transparency, procedural fairness and a constructive resolution that protects the living garden while Council considers the community’s request.

The complete Recreation Services response and petition acknowledgement will be added to our public correspondence record later today:

https://www.ediblescapes.org/petition

THANK YOU, COUNCILLOR PETER YOUNG—NOW OUR COMMUNITY MUST SPEAK

We extend our heartfelt appreciation to Councillor Peter Young for acting promptly to help the Ediblescapes community petition reach Council.

The City has confirmed that the petition meets its formal requirements and will be presented by Councillor Young at the Council meeting on Tuesday, 25 August 2026.

Peter has taken action for Ediblescapes. Now Ediblescapes supporters can strengthen that action by showing Council how deeply the community values this living garden.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

• Leave a respectful comment on this Facebook post explaining why Ediblescapes matters to you.

• Join us at the garden tomorrow and write a short message in our Community Support Book.

• Record a simple 30-second Facebook video or Reel describing your connection with Ediblescapes and why you want the garden protected. Tag Ediblescapes or send the video to us so we can share it.

• Continue collecting petition signatures and return completed sheets to us by Monday.

Your message does not need to be complicated. Speak from your own experience:

“I support Ediblescapes because…”

Together, these personal voices can demonstrate that Ediblescapes is more than a licensed space. It is a living garden shaped by years of community participation, ecological care, cultural exchange and shared learning.

Thank you, Councillor Peter Young, for helping this community voice reach the Council chamber.

And thank you to everyone standing with Ediblescapes—peacefully, respectfully and with hope.

Petition and public information:

https://www.ediblescapes.org/petition

URGENT: PLEASE SIGN AND RETURN THE PETITION TODAY

Councillor Peter Young needs to submit the Ediblescapes petition today so it can be assessed and considered for tabling at Tuesday’s Council meeting.

If you are an adult Gold Coast resident, please:

1. Download and print the petition.
2. Add your name, Gold Coast residential address and handwritten signature.
3. Scan or clearly photograph the signed page.
4. Email it to us immediately at [email protected]

Download the petition and read the supporting information here:

https://www.ediblescapes.org/petition

Today is the critical deadline for the first signed pages. Your prompt response will help Councillor Young present the petition and support Ediblescapes before Council.

Please continue collecting additional handwritten signatures over the weekend. Further completed sheets can still be returned to us by Monday and added to the petition.

Every signature matters. Thank you for acting quickly and standing with Ediblescapes.