Kitchen garden: food and wine annual

The reader with the most imaginative answer will win a copy of Indira Naidoo's book The Edible City (Lantern. $45). The author, who was Garden Ambassador for Floriade in 2014, visits five kitchen gardens including the miraculous Wayside Chapel rooftop gartden and beehive in Sydney and Mount Carmel School bush-tucker garden in inner-Sydney's 'gritty Waterloo'.

There are 40 produce-inspired recipes, including an entree of salmon sashimi with avocado dip from Naidoo's husband Mark, zucchini soup with zucchini lowers and baked Greek chicken with olives.

A kitchen gardener from Nimmitabel, raised in South Australia, told me about McLaren Vale Olive Oil body lotion made from local olives by Cocco and marketed under the Maine Beach label. She thought it was superb.

As 2016 has been a Kitchen Garden year of olive trees on public land from Charnwood to Weston Park, we tracked down the product at Beautiful Gifting in Queanbeyan. Your picnic and planting days are organised with a small olive tree, a bottle of extra virgin olive oil from local La Barre or Homeleigh Grove, and a Dom's sourdough loaf from Queanbeyan at Kingston Old Bus Depot Markets.

Kangaroo Island roadkill recipes featured in this column in November and Maine Beach has soaps and hand creams for the gardener enriched with Ligurian honey from Kangaroo Island. Find them at the National Museum of Australia shop, Florey Pharmacy and White Apple in Yarralumla. Add a jar of local honey and instructions for making a bee hotel in the home garden.

The Weston Creek Orchard in Unwin Street, Weston, was planted by the Canberra Institute of Technology horticulture section in the late 1980s and early 1990s as a training orchard for students. It was also used as a test area for a variety of fruits and nuts and a wonderful range of old fruit trees exists. The orchard was abandoned when the horticultural section moved to Bruce Campus in 2009.

In the words of Christmas, an original drawing from 1988 shows five nectarine trees, six pears, seven apples, eight peach trees, apricots, European and Japanese plum trees, quince, ten cherry trees, mulberry, persimmon, fig, feijoa, two almond and Chinese chestnut trees. No partridge but a fox in the blackberry bushes beneath the grape vines.

Chris Boswell of Canberra Biodynamic Group, said that in March this year, working with the ACT Government, they were offered the care and maintenance of the orchard with ACT for Bees and supported by Fetherston Gardens Friends and Weston Creek Community Council. They have been holding working bees in the orchard since October.

Julie Armstrong of ACT for Bees said the native bee hotel was built on site by Carmen Rauhut and Jack Mather, helped by children from the nearby Orana Steiner School and children of parents involved in the orchard. It is made from timber, bricks, twigs and other recycled bits.

During my visit on 20 November, a team was using picks and shovels to clear weeds from around quince and apple trees bearing early fruit. The next working bee will be held on 22 January, 2017 (see actforbees.org website or Facebook page).

At the Undercurrent Design Market on 19 November, Anna Gianakis was showing her smart new Home range of coffee cups which will be sold in Agency in the Ori building in Braddon. Anna, who featured in this column in 2005, has a studio in the Mawson garden of her father Con who has lived in the house since 1975. The garden is a living Mediterranean diet with olives, grapes, figs, tomatoes, wild horta greens and oregano.

Con Gianakis is a member of the Beekeepers Association of the ACT and sells his Canberra Anthe Honey at Rotary Trash n Treasure Jamison Markets on Sundays. Anthe meaans blossom in Greek and the honey won a prize at the Royal Canberra Show this year. Although bees can travel up to 10kms for pollen, Con says they feed on his rosemary and eucalypts in Shackleton Circuit.

It's the festive season and time for a bit of fun. Seaweed, wasabi, Arame sea vegetable and wakame have featured in this column this year. At the afterwork Christmas drinkies, wow them by wearing the Eat-Me- Sushi silver and plastic cufflinks made by jeweller Sharon Cornthwaite of Bega ($147, Craft ACT shop, North Building, London Circuit).

To make your lunch a work of art, use sushi recipes from the clever "Smiling Sushi Roll", a book by Tokyo-based Takayo Kiyota, known as Tama-chan ($16.99, The Curatoreum shop, National Portrait Gallery). On the book's cover, is Edvard Munch's "The Scream", depicted in rice, vegetables and nori and I watched her hilarious video online. You will laugh, even at the music.

If you prefer antipasto, The Gourmet Memos are delicious stocking fillers. "Salami Notes" from Spain look like salami covered in 'rind'. They are tied with string and you peel off a slice to make a note. ($19.95, The Curatoreum).

Susan Parsons is a Canberra writer.