Bush Food Public Spaces
David Buckley

Lets fill our public spaces with Indigenous food

Let’s fill up our public parks and green spaces with plants that can provide a backup source of food available to anyone. Plants that are resistant to pests and drought, and that can also teach us about our Indigenous citizens.

Examples include: native grasses like Kangaroo Grass that can be used to make flour, berries like the Midgin Berry or Pepper Berry that could replace blueberries, grapes, tomatoes and pepper. Citrus alternatives such as the Finger Lime. Fruits like the Davidson Plum, nuts like the Macadamia and Bunya, green leafy plants like Warrigal greens and Pigface that could be used in salads, and so many more.

As well as providing an Indigenous educational experience, filling our public spaces with native foods will provide an outdoors activity for foraging groups, and habitat for native animals.

These gardens would be low maintenance, drought tolerant, and engaging. They would also have the architectural features similar to many public gardens now being developed.

It embraces a part of our heritage that has been ignored for many years, and begins the conversation on how our food can change to suit the environmental conditions found in Australia now and in the future.

A simple Google search will find hundreds of native substitutes for the foods we eat.