Planting the seed: community push for verge gardens delivers green shoots

Urban nature restorer Anna Noon has welcomed the release of Lake Macquarie City Council's verge gardening policy and its plan to give residents free plants.

Last month, Ms Noon, who is part of Lake Macquarie environmental not-for-profit, the Groundswell Collective, announced the Urge For A Verge program, aimed at educating and encouraging residents to beautify their grassed nature strips into native gardens.

Ms Noon was also critical of Lake Macquarie City Council's tardiness in implementing a recommendation from its 2022 Urban Greening Strategy and Urban Heat Strategy to release its policy for verge gardens.

The neighbouring City of Newcastle has a published policy for building gardens on nature strips.

Lake Macquarie council this week unveiled its policy, which includes offering 10 free local tubestock plants to residents following the approval of their verge garden application.

Ms Noon said the free plants initiative was a "lovely surprising incentive".

"I'm really happy it's finally here," she said.

"It looks great. I think it's a practical approach to verge gardening and we will be helping to promote and support it."

There are 28 native plant species available, including tussock grass, parrot pea, bushy hedgehog, narrow-leafed myrtle and flannel flower.

Ms Noon said she expected the Lake Macquarie community to take up the offer, citing that 30 people attended a verge gardening workshop at the Multi-Arts Pavilion, mima, at Speers Point on Thursday night.

"The timing for the policy and guidelines was fortuitous," she said.

"The workshop was sold out, so there is certainly a lot of community interest."

The council's manager of environmental systems, Brendan Callander, said it was important that residents applied to the council before planting verge gardens to ensure they did not create any traffic issues or affect utilities.

"Street trees and verge gardens make a real difference to how our neighbourhoods look and feel," Mr Callander said.

"They help cool the city, improve health and wellbeing, and provide important habitats for local wildlife, all while reducing stormwater runoff and filtering pollutants.

"We want people to enjoy greener neighbourhoods, and the standards set out how it can be done in a way that's safe and accessible for everyone."

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