Edible Gardening at BAAG

Grow your own Herbs, Fruit & Vegies

At BAAG we are committed to helping people live in a more sustainable way. Growing your own fresh herbs, fruit and vegies is one way you can make a real difference, and you get the added bonus of the best tasting food you will ever eat.

Edible Landscaping

Now you can have your plants and eat them too!

Why just plant an ornamental or functional plant when it could give you a harvest too?

There is a new edible landscape section in the kitchen garden section. This means that, besides the usual alphabetical ordering of the herbs and vegetables, we have edible and herbal plants grouped together in groundcovers, grasses, perennials, shrubs, climbers, evergreen trees, dwarf trees and deciduous trees to make it easy for you to landscape with useful and edible plants. There are many alternatives available.

BAAG's Edible Parterre Garden

This new entrance to Bulleen Art & Garden reflects our growing efforts (pardon the pun) to inspire people to grow food in their own gardens. These garden beds are a 21st century Australian version of the traditional French parterre garden. They are set out in near symmetry, but are edged with recycled metal railings (in place of the traditional hedging). The beds are raised, and once fully established will envelop visitors as they walk to the entrance.

The walkway through the parterre is a coloured concrete path featuring a pebbled stem and leaves studded with hand crafted ceramic vegetables. The four gardens are bursting with lush produce - herbs, fruit, vegies & companion plants, and have been designed and planted by BAAG staff members Anna, Jo, Joy & Marika. The beautiful ceramic murals mounted on the wall are the work of another BAAG staff member... our own beret-wearing, cigar-smoking, scooter-riding Giuseppe Raneri.

We were very excited to launch this redevelopment of our main entrance in December 2007. - come and have a look if you haven't been already. You'll be amazed... and hopefully inspired to try it yourself.

Food Forest

The most talked about change has been the removal of the Japanese garden, a focal point of the nursery for the past 15 years (don't worry, the plants went to good homes). It has now been replaced with a food forest and bush food garden. Growing food for yourself, your family and your friends is one of the most environmentally friendly and rewarding things that you can do, but many people don't want to give up their ornamental gardens. There is an easy solution. There's a type of landscaping called 'Edible Landscaping' and it encompasses creating gardens that are not only functional but ornamental too. This is what we are showcasing in our food forest garden. The food forest is located right next to our gallery and can be seen from our front carpark.

The food forest, which is next to the gallery on a little hill with a stream running around the edge, draws on the tried and tested forest system of nature, that is it's designed to emulate a natural forest system but with useful and food plants for people. A food forest in time will look after itself to a certain extent, relying on being made up of permanent, perennial, self seeding, mulching and nitrogen fixing plants that fill in the many niches in a forest. Planting in this way reduces the amount of space and water that's usually necessary for this amount of plants.

The many niches or layers of a forest include a top storey, understorey shrubs, vines, herbaceous layer, groundcovers, water plants and root systems. Productive examples of this that you can see in our food forest include

Top Level - apples, cherries and quince

Understory Shrub Layer - tamarillo, currants, gooseberries, blueberries, cherry guava, coffee

Vines - climbing yam, sweet potato and some yet to be planted include perennial beans and chokos

Herbaceous Layer - lovage , horse radish, chives, garlic, asparagus, ginger, cardamom, purple artichokes

Groundcover - strawberries, chamomile, brahmi, corsican mint, peppermint geranium, thyme and rosemary

Root Layer - potatoes, jerusalem artichokes, yams, yacons, sweet potatoes

Water Plants - taro, vietnamese mint, arrow root, watercress

Across the stream on a flat area is a newly planted bush food garden. Everything in the bush food garden is native and a lot of the natives are indigenous, that is, local to our area.

We are looking forward to being able to harvest some bush tucker and use it with the bush food recipes we have collected, which include tarts, icecreams, breads, sauces and tapenades. These recipes are now on our website.

The bush food garden will provide foods like berries, seeds, roots, herbs and nectars.

Berries - davidson plums, muntries, riberries, pepper berries, native raspberries, kangaroo apple, midyim berry

Seeds - flax seed, wattle seed, which is good for breads but also roasted for a coffee flavour substitute. There's kangaroo and weeping grass whose seeds can be ground for flour. Research and selection is now being undertaken for weeping grass with bigger seeds and higher yields to be more useful in agriculture.

Root crops - yam daisies, bulbine lilies, native carrots, bindweed, chocolate and vanilla lilies, lomandras and dianellas

Herbs and greens - native spinach, native basil, hoveas, lemon myrtle, sea parsley

Nectars - grass tree, grevillea, bottlebrush, bursaria. Nectars are used as sweeteners and are either swished or soaked in water for a sweet drink or sucked straight from the flower.

Why not let one of our expert consultants tailor an edible landscape design for you too? See our consultancies page for more information.

Certified Organic Seedlings

We have lots of certified organically grown seedlings in stock. These seedlings are grown locally at CERES in East Brunswick. The range changes weekly but expect to find heirloom tomatoes, eggplants, chillies, lettuce, herbs as well as cucumbers, pumpkins and more. Re-live the flavours that your grandparents used to know. Being heirloom varieties, you can save seed from these plants and grow them year after year, as was once always the practice with home gardeners.