Community farms and veggie gardens are adding value to new housing developments

There’s a tempest of tomatoes everywhere you look, being washed and squashed, boiled and broiled, and then smashed and splashed into bottles lined up as far as the eye can see.

Today is passata day at The Cape Community Farm in Cape Paterson, not too far from Phillip Island, where the owners of homes in the new master-planned community an hour south-east of Melbourne come together to harvest their home-grown tomatoes and smash them into a lip-smackingly scrumptious paste.

“We harvested 170 kilograms of tomatoes this year, and all got together on the weekend to make sauce,” says Brendan Condon, the director of the carbon-neutral, sustainable housing community of 230 home sites. “It’s a great, fun day … and the result is delicious!”

The Cape is bringing to life an idea firmly rooted in the past but now growing in popularity across Australia: building new homes with on-site community gardens where owners can produce their own food and, along the way, increase their property value.

Increasingly, master-planned estates and apartment complexes are including group farms or large-scale food gardens within their developments, as a way of building bonds among residents, improving liveability and health, and adding to property values.

Of the 30 projects being worked on by Koos de Keijzer, principal of architectural firm dKO, no fewer than half now include some element of community farming.

“People in both apartments and houses love them as it’s a great way of connecting with neighbours [and] staving off loneliness in new developments, and at the same time you get to eat fresh vegetables and fruit much more cheaply,” de Keijzer says. “It’s a complete win-win.

“I’m Dutch, and in Holland, it’s a part of all developments to have a portion of the building where you can farm. But now it’s starting to take off in Australia too. That farm-to-kitchen story is gaining more prominence, and developers are really opening up to the idea.”

De Keijzer was the architect of Arkadia Apartments in Alexandria, Sydney – a mix of 152 apartments bought by residents or built to rent by Defence Housing Australia. On its rooftop are 1200 square metres of rooftop gardens growing vegetables, fruit and herbs, and housing chickens.

Back in Melbourne, at the Woodlea Estate master-planned community in Aintree, residents are just as enthusiastic about their own community farm.

“I’ve been living here close to five years now, and I got involved with the gardens almost a year ago,” says software engineer Abhi Patel, 40. “Now my daughter Aadya, who’s nine, loves coming with me once a week to contribute to our community.

“We grow tomatoes, zucchinis, cucumbers, chilli, beans, peppers, melons, apples, plums, peaches … everything. Aadya is very keen too, and she meets people there and learns what to do, and then we finish up with a chat and a nice cup of coffee.”

That garden was started by Jono Ingram, the founding director of the social enterprise Eat Grow Garden, which builds community gardens for estates and schools, after he moved to the area. A 2018 pilot project he began proved so successful that a year ago, he created a much bigger one of 47 square metres, which now produces 400 to 600 kilograms of food a year.

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“Gardens take a while to settle in and, because it’s a new development, the land clearing lost us a lot of biodiversity,” Ingram says. “It takes a while for the birds and insects to come back again, but they’re starting to now.

“Our garden is still undersized for the scale of the estate, but we’re hoping it will grow, and we’ve had conversations about it becoming a genuine urban farm on site, or moving to a bigger site in the development.

“I bring my two daughters, aged 14 and 12, to work here too, and they enjoy being in the garden and eating raw vegetables as they pick them and learning about healthy eating.”

The Cape garden is much bigger and produces around five tonnes of food a year, with the help of a full-time farmer and 100 garden members who grow produce in sustainable Foodcube wicking beds with their own built-in water reservoirs. Some of the food grown is sold cheaply at a Saturday market to residents, some is given to food charities, and the rest is left for locals to pick up.

It’s a different kind of experience at the 199-apartment Union Balmain in Sydney, where the 130 metre-long rooftop – with harbour views – has been given over to farming. The building’s designer, Turner architect Stephen Cox, says the garden plots grow a variety of vegetables and herbs for residents to grab as they need them.

“The produce garden is integrated into a bigger garden, so it doesn’t look like a contrast between manicured gardens and tomato canes,” he says. “A community garden made a lot of sense in that space as it’s such a long rooftop.”

Another of Cox’s projects was the 828-unit Meridian & Monte in south-western Sydney’s Riverwood. It’s a mix of private apartments and social dwellings, with a produce garden on the podium above a car park, featuring raised planters so residents don’t have to bend down.

“The main thing with community gardens is that you have to make them available and accessible for everyone, to accommodate everyone, whatever their age or background,” says Azin Emampour, senior associate of Landscape Architect Spire, which created a community garden in the new Canberra suburb of Denman Prospect.

“These gardens make housing developments and apartment buildings so much more welcoming, bringing in birds, bees and butterflies to benefit biodiversity and help educate everyone about growing food. It’s a very exciting trend for the future.”