Bellingen Shire Council is opening up its roadside verges to the creativity of residents, with a new set of guidelines released to allow locals to garden outside their front gates.
Traditionally, roadside verge space has been dominated by grass, which provides little aesthetic or environmental benefit. However, forward-thinking councils across Australia are bucking the trend by allowing residents to transform these underutilised strips of grass into thriving oases.
The Council’s new Verge Maintenance Policy and Verge Gardening Guidelines will allow urban residents to apply to garden on verge space.
“Verge gardening provides a range of environmental and social benefits such as increasing habitat for native flora and fauna, absorbing rainwater, reducing run-off, extending biodiversity corridors, addressing climate change impacts, beautifying the streetscape, encouraging food growing and building community connections,” the Council said in a statement.
The new guidelines outline the responsibilities of verge gardeners including consulting with neighbours, gaining approval from Council, checking for services, complying with design guidelines, selecting appropriate plants and maintaining the garden. A list of recommended plants is provided including native grasses, groundcover and shrubs.
Mayor, Steve Allan said he was excited about the opportunity for residents to come together to beautify local streets and improve the urban environment.
“Residents could create flower gardens to enhance the aesthetic of their street, native gardens to provide habitat for wildlife or edible gardens to increase food resilience. With so many creative residents and avid gardeners across this Shire I am eager to see what residents come up with,” he said.
Council is encouraging residents to start chatting to their neighbours about possibilities.
“Whole streets or neighbourhoods may like to get together to design a wildlife corridor along the verge, a pollinator strip or a productive food garden to share. There are many opportunities for our creative and connected community,” the Council says.
