Sydney Edible Garden Trail gives keen gardeners a chance to check out local food gardens

Want to peek inside the private backyards of some of Sydney’s most passionate and sustainable gardeners and meet like-minded green thumbs?

The Sydney Edible Garden Trail (offered over two days on the weekend of March 21 and 22) gives you the chance to do all that, and more.

Making its debut this year, the non-profit event gives you access to 67 gardens north of the Parramatta River, scattered across the council areas of the Northern Beaches, Hornsby, Lane Cove, Hunters Hill, Mosman, Kuring-Gai, Canada Bay, North Sydney, Willoughby, Parramatta, Ryde, Penrith and The Hills.

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In a win for keen and aspiring Sydney gardeners, Laurie Green, co-founder of the Sydney Edible Garden Trail, started the event with three other women. “We all work in various levels of sustainability and are passionate about sharing it,” Green says.

Inspired by the popular Blue Mountains Edible Garden Trail, they set out to create a Sydney version. “We just really want to educate people and promote more edible gardens,” she says.

Green, also the founder of Crop Swap Australia, said a big focus of the event was education around drought-tolerant gardening and sustainability. “A lot of the vegetable gardens come with solar and water tanks,” she says. “It’s a greater extension on the systems around an edible garden.

“We’ve partnered with a company called Waterup that make wicking beds and they’re giving free workshops.” One lucky participant of the workshops will win their own free wicking bed system.

Other practical happenings on the day include cooking demonstrations, crop swaps and composting workshops (with a chance to win a Subpod compost bin). “Every single garden has free workshops and tours, prizes and giveaways,” Green says.

“You might also get to taste some interesting foods grown by people and talk to the gardeners.”

A showcase of ideas, the garden trail also features food forests, bees, chooks, worm farms, and difficult to manage sites, such as steep gardens that people have managed to make productive. One of Green’s favourite gardens has raised beds, bush regeneration and chickens fenced within an orchard.

“As a range, we’ve got a garden within a rehabilitation centre, community, school and prior gardens,” she says. “The thing to remember, is it’s Sydney, it’s this highly urban environment but people have still managed to produce a lot of food in relatively small areas.”

She also hopes to inspire a new generation, and help build resilience in city folk. “There’s so many amazing things that come from gardening – mental health and wellbeing. It’s not like reading a book or watching TV. You get to speak to people in their own gardens.”

A further drawcard is being able to learn from gardens with the same seasonal and weather pattern as your own, Green adds.

Tickets cost $25 for an adult and $5 for children (a family ticket is also available), and can be booked online at Eventbrite. The one ticket covers the whole weekend and all gardens.

Green suggests people design their own adventure. The site provides more info on each garden and an interactive map with addresses (provided to ticket-holders) allows participants to plan out which gardens and events they want to visit.

The first 40 people to each garden will receive a free packets of seeds, and profits from the event go back into funding more edible school and community gardens and building local community.