From little things, big things grow:cultivating community with One

Magic Square

Tori Moreton

The seed

• Vision of a self sustaining region –– Protection of

productive land – Productive suburbs– Community with the

skill of food production, preserving and cooking.

Linked in Project

• Slow Food – a non-profit, member-supported organisation – Maintain local food traditions & promote interest in the food we

eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world.

• Willunga Farmers Market & Diana Bickford of Bickleigh Vale

• City of Onkaparinga (our local council) Community programs and the staff; joint Government Obesity & Lifestyle Program

• Community Gardens & School Gardens• Lolo Houbein & One Magic Square growing method• Jamie Oliver’s Pass It On teaching method

From little things…

• Keep it small

• Keep it simple

• Start local

• One step at a time

Simple

• 1 square kilometre (suburb)

• 1 square metre (food garden)

• 1 growing season• 1 dish (grow

ingredients for dish)• 1 shared meal

The Pizza Plot

• Growing food for dishes that you like – – Eg: The Pizza Plot, – The Stirfry Plot, – The Soup Plot

• Lolo Houbein’s One Magic Square – published by Wakefield

Press.

The Kit

1. PLOT GUIDE BOOK• The Growing Guide is

a booklet describing in easy to follow steps how to grow & cook from your one square metre plot.

2. SEEDS / SEEDLINGS3. FORK

The Program

Participants do:• Gardening Workshops• Farm visit • Cooking Class• Grow a 1 square metre

food garden• Harvest, swap, cook,

share dinner• Pass it on…

Fertile Ground

• City of Onkaparinga – Community Development section – OPAL: Obesity Prevention & Lifestyle - a joint

Federal, State and Local Government initiative.

– Two suburbs:• School Garden • Community Garden

Lolo’s gardening inspiration

• “Healthy food can be grown anywhere. Food will grow where you are. Australia’s best agricultural land is being covered by suburbs; therefore we should grow our food in the suburbs”

• “A one square meter garden gives you a fair idea how far you want to go. The labour required is minimal and pleasurable because you don’t start off with a big project only to find you have overreached yourself, throwing the garden fork away and running to the supermarket for a half a sprayed caulie and two pale tomatoes.”

• “...feed, mulch and water, it’s that simple.”

Urban Food Growing Nation

• “As urban food growing becomes a necessity instead of a hobby, it’s good know there are more than five million backyards in Australia. Imagine squares of green edibles in every backyard that doesn’t’ grow vegetables yet! Globally more than half of all people now live in urban areas and urban food farming is bound to increase.”

• Quotes from Lolo Houbein’s One Magic Square book published by Wakefield Press

We can, they have….

One suburb today, tomorrow a whole nation

• UK Dig for Victory

• Venezuala microgardens

Dig For Victory

• Facing the war ration crisis in 1939 the UK government introduced a Dig for Victory campaign urging the British to grow their own food.

• Between 1939 and 1945 imports of food were halved and the acreage of British land used for food production increased by 80%. Around 1.4 million people participated.

• During this campaign, in war years, British people were the healthiest in recorded history.

Microgarden Project• Venezuela started a microgarden

project in 2004 in Caracas with 8,000 square metre home gardens.

• Quote: 'Each square metre, continuously cropped, can produce 330 heads of lettuce, [or] 18 kg of tomatoes, or 16 kg of cabbage per year.' – Quote from Plan B 3.0 by Lester R.

Brown, www.earthpolicy.org. 

• Food & Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations www.fao.org

Big things grow..

• Residents have a go and learn something along the way, hopefully some of them dig up another square metre of their lawn and change the way they eat. 

• Big things – pass it on, spreading food gardens across Australia.