Should Councils Subsidise Verge Gardening?

This week another council is offering free plants to try to get more people verge gardening. Is this a good idea? How much difference does it make?

Facebook stories popped up this week about City of Yarra Council announcing “access to free local native plants [for verge gardens] as part of a six-month trial.”

Yarra have a very sensible verge garden policy, quite restrictive with a lot of information about what not to do, and an online questionnaire that residents need to complete to claim up to 4 free plants depending on the site. Have a look. Remember that Yarra is an inner metropolitan area with busy streets.

It’s a good tactic. It provides an angle for a news story, and an incentive to get people to acknowledge the restrictions within the policy and register the space.

Council Incentives

This story raised the perennial question and comments about whether councils should provide incentives for verge gardeners - free plants, free mulch, rate reductions, etc. - and how much information and promotion they should provide beyond the basic guidelines and plant lists.

Verge garden enthusiasts tend to think councils should give much more, rightly pointing out the environmental and social benefits of verge gardens. They assume that more incentives and more information will inspire more verge gardens.

For councils, verge gardens are just one of many strategies to increase shade and biodiversity, and reduce urban heat. It’s also one of the most contentious. At the same time, they have other advocacy groups wanting incentives for cycling and walking, composting to reduce landfill, and community meeting spaces.

Inspiring Verge Gardeners

Also this month, our local group’s verge visit was to an impressive verge garden for pollinators. You can see the report with more photos and a plant list here.

We met Brendan two years ago when we were doing the Banyo Verge Garden Project. He was inspired to plant but not as part of the project. He didn’t want help or free plants. He would do his own thing in his own time. You will see from the photo that it complies with the Brisbane City Council guidelines and has a grass path clear for pedestrians. (Note: The Banyo project was not funded by council.)

I am much the same. While I never walk past the opportunity to get a free native plant from my council, it simply adds an extra plant to my garden. These plants are aimed at gardeners, trying to get them to plant natives instead of exotics in their home gardens. Free plants don’t turn people into keen gardeners, let alone into someone who wants to be a verge gardener. They are much more likely to change the balance of planting (from exotic to native) and familiarise existing gardeners with their local native plants.

Council Contribution

Councils already make two very big contributions to verge gardening:

1. They create the policies and guidelines - which includes processes for dealing with complaints and disputes about verge gardens.

2. They plant and maintain street trees - the one big, expensive plant you need on your verge.

Resident Contribution

Residents provide the time and labour to convert and care for a verge garden. The cost of materials varies depending on the resident’s choices. The low-key methods of verge gardening that fit most policies mean that costs are minimal and often less than maintaining grass. See Big Projects or Slow Gardening and Don’t invest too much money or emotion into the plants.

Ideally, residents read the policies and information on their Council’s website before planting. However, experience tells me that many don’t and, for those who do, some don’t fully understand them. Yarra’s strategy above would be aimed at that.

We also hope that people are inspired by our verge gardens to start their own. Yet experience also suggests that it doesn’t have a great effect. Brendan’s verge garden and my verge garden are both surrounded by bare grass verges.

How Do We Scale?

Both the council’s contributions (policy and street trees) and some residents’ verge gardens are the starting points. They provide living examples of what is possible and desirable. That was enough for Brendan. It was enough for me.

Verge gardens can be less work to maintain than grass, but they do require a reasonable level of thought and commitment. If incentives are needed to get people over the line, I’d be concerned about whether they have the commitment to make sure their garden is maintained in a way that ensures ongoing care and community harmony.

The exception would be residents who are committed to native verge gardens but are unable to do the conversion themselves. Funding from councils to residents isn’t necessarily the way to do this. For the Banyo Project, non-government funding was used to provide supported employment to an existing social enterprise.

What’s needed is the middle civic layer: the community groups and networks that link between the councils and individual residents. That middle layer can work with councils to help get the message out, while bringing residents together to tell their stories and provide inspiring examples of gardens. The garden visit above and the way that story has been shared on social media is a good example.

As well as the ACF Community Brisbane Northside, I see groups like the East Gippsland Verge Gardens and Landcare Inc in Victoria and the Pasadena And St Marys Action Group in South Australia, stepping up and working in a collaborative way with their respective councils to green their cities.

The key is working with. It’s collaboration that finds innovative ways to do more together than anyone can do alone. That’s the ethos of The Shady Lanes Project and the theme of the first Shady Lanes book: Garden on the Verge: A New Approach - now at the printing proof stage, to be released early November.

What Do You Think?

What do you think about council incentives? Would they change your actions? What do you think might motivate more people to replace the grass with a verge garden? What do you think might motivate more people to comply with council policies?