The University of Melbourne's Union Square is to be given an edible makeover, albeit for just one day. Come Wednesday it will be a full-blown vegetable patch brimming with betel leaf, lotus, taro, water chestnuts and other such exotic offerings alongside more regular productive plants.
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The garden is part of a Melbourne Food and Wine Festival event that comprises educational workshops for local primary school students and a program of short talks and demonstrations (including a discussion between Stephanie Alexander and Fairfax food writer Richard Cornish) looking at the issues surrounding local food growing.
The event, called "Think, Eat, Talk, Grow", will also see the launch of a farmers' market to be held in Union Square (in the university's Parkville campus) every Wednesday from 11am to 3pm until the end of May.
Dr Chris Williams, a lecturer in urban horticulture, says the one-day display garden (on show from 11am to 3pm) will tap into the ethnic diversity of Carlton where many children "have the experience of their parents buying non-mainstream vegies".
Growing from recycled wooden fruit boxes, it will flag both what foods it is possible to grow in inner-city Melbourne and also horticulture courses at the university's Burnley Campus.
Go to melbournefoodandwine.com.au for more information.
