Flavours of Our Community Gardens — the website
CGA celebrates community garden food and cooking
Story and videos by Russ Grayson, August 2023
I think that American author, social activist, philosopher and feminist, Grace Lee Boggs, got it right when she said:
We can begin by doing small things at the local level, like planting community gardens or looking out for our neighbors. That is how change takes place in living systems, not from above but from within, from many local actions occurring simultaneously.
Grace Lee Boggs
Her comment gets at the social heart of community gardening as a convivial activity. And what can be more convivial than cooking and eating what we grow in our community gardens?
From recipe book to recipe website
That—cooking and eating—is the idea behind the Flavours of Our Community Gardens website. Like a vigorous tomato vine in the heat of summer, the website grew out of Community Gardens Australia’s Flavours of Launceston recipe book that was launched in August this year. The book documents 59 recipes from 11 community gardens in Launceston. The gardens reflect their demographic surroundings, so it comes as no surprise that Flavours of Launceston brings together recipes from places as distant as South and Southeast Asia, Europe, the Americas, the Pacific Islands and Australia. The website takes us further by bringing together recipes from community gardeners Australia-wide.
Sharing our community gardens know-how
There have been other community garden recipe books and some community gardens publish recipes on their websites, however, the Flavours of Our Community Gardens recipe website is the first that will bring together in one location the recipes produced by a range of community gardens. In doing so it will extend the cultural diversity of the Flavours of Launceston recipe book. Now, your community garden can be part of this sharing of culinary know-how.
Flavours of Launceston and the Flavours of Our Community Gardens recipe website were launched in August 2023 at an event in Launceston attended by around 85 people, including some of the community gardeners who contributed recipes. Community Gardens Australia Tasmania coordinator, Jo Dean, says the launch was “fabulous”.
Contributing to resilient towns and cities
In a time of a cost of living crisis, the security of our family’s food supply can be improved through the practice of community gardening and by sharing how to cook what we grow. Community gardening also encourages the cooperation that makes our suburbs, towns and cities more resilient places.
If your community garden has been influenced by the permaculture design system, then be assured your sharing its recipes on the Flavours of Our Community Gardens website enacts permaculture’s mutual assistance ethic of sharing what is spare.
How to share
So, may we invite your community garden to participate in this process of community-building nutrition by sharing your recipes on the website? Here is how to go about it:
- Go to the Flavours of Our Community Gardens website
- Create an account by clicking on the ‘+ Add Recipe’ button
- Then log in with your username and password
- Then you can add a recipe by completing the online recipe form
- Once you have uploaded your recipe, you will be directed to your ‘My Dashboard’ where you can edit your entry.
Simple!
Out of gardens grow fleeting flowers but lasting friendships.
Beverly Rose Hopper
Find out more
- Flavours of Our Community Gardens website
- Download the Flavours of Launceston recipe book
- Contribute your community garden’s recipes to the website
- Read about the launch of the Flavours of Launceston recipe book by Russ Grayson.