Ediblescapes Community Edible Forest Gardening Action Days 2025

Overview

The Ediblescapes Community Edible Forest Gardening Action Days of 2025 grew out of a process that began on 24 August 2024, when Ediblescapes launched the first experimental gathering, described as Edition Zero of the Agroforestry Community Action Day. That early phase was created to prepare Ediblescapes for a proposed second-stage agroforestry zone within the Country Paradise Parklands Horticulture Hub masterplan, while also strengthening community capacity to help implement and maintain such a project over time.

From the beginning, these action days were never only about volunteer gardening. They became a living community learning process that combined hands-on work, conversation, demonstration, food sharing and ecological education. Across late 2024 and throughout 2025, Ediblescapes welcomed practitioners and participants with experience in permaculture food forests, syntropic systems, agroecology and biocultural food knowledge.

Over the course of 2025, the gatherings gradually evolved in language and focus. What began as Community Agroforestry Action Days became more clearly expressed as Community Edible Forest Gardening Action Days. This reflected a practical shift: from preparing for a larger future agroforestry zone toward deepening the existing Ediblescapes site as a public edible forest garden, a syntropic demonstration space, and a community learning place shaped by shared care.

Together, these gatherings strengthened Ediblescapes through pruning, mulching, propagation, tree planting, biomass reorganisation, soil-building, path care, plant identification, harvesting, cultural food preparation, communal meals and public conversation. They helped transform the garden into a more mature living example of commons-based regenerative practice.

2025 at a glance

• January – Living nursery planting, propagation and strategy conversation
• February – Permagarden renewal with Suveran Dewsnap
• April – Young Food Foragers and community feast
• May – Community visioning for the next syntropic food forest stage
• July – Edible leaf identification and cataloguing
• August – Bio-intensive edible forest planting day
• September – Celebration planting after Nature-Based Tourism grant success
• November – Biocultural learning focus and edible forest tasting
• December – Year-end reflection and celebration of the living forest garden

January 2025

Living nursery, propagation and strategy conversation

The first Action Day of 2025 centred on planting propagation material with Bunya Halasz, whose visit helped strengthen the idea of Ediblescapes as a living nursery for future edible forest development. Participants planted densely into an 8-metre bed and continued the work in the following days, building what Ediblescapes described as a nursery for future agroforestry expansion.

The day also opened space for conversation around the Ediblescapes 2025–2030 Strategy Plan, connecting practical planting with long-term vision. Food harvested from the garden was prepared into a communal meal, reinforcing the Action Day rhythm of shared work, shared learning and shared food.

February 2025

Permagarden renewal with Suveran Dewsnap

In February, the Action Day brought fresh life to the long-established Permagarden biointensive bed through pruning, perennial propagation and tree planting with Suveran Dewsnap, a permaculture and food forest practitioner with more than 30 years of experience. Intensive pigeon pea pruning helped stimulate surrounding growth and renew the energy of the bed.

This day reinforced Ediblescapes’ ongoing practice of building resilient, water-harvesting, sponge-like soil systems through composting organic matter, mulch, terracing and careful plant relationships. It highlighted the continuing importance of community-led agroecological learning in the garden.

April 2025

Young Food Foragers and community feast

April brought a special intergenerational edition of the Action Day through the Young Food Foragers gathering. Children guided participants through the edible forest, showing how to identify, harvest and enjoy edible plants growing in the garden.

This day highlighted a powerful aspect of Ediblescapes: that learning does not move only from adults to children, but also through children’s confidence, observation and joy. The event brought together family participation, food education and communal celebration, showing Ediblescapes as a place where ecological learning can be shared across generations.

May 2025

Community visioning for the next syntropic food forest stage

In May, the Action Day combined hands-on work with collective visioning. After a season of learning from invited practitioners, the community gathered to refine the next stage of the edible forest garden and to prepare thinking around the coming licence renewal.

This moment marked an important shift. Rather than focusing only on possible expansion, Ediblescapes increasingly grounded its future in strengthening the existing garden as a demonstrative syntropic edible forest. The Action Day became a space not only for physical gardening, but for collaborative planning and community stewardship.

July 2025

Edible leaf identification and cataloguing

By July, the Action Days had moved more clearly into the language of Community Edible Forest Gardening. This month focused on identifying and cataloguing the edible and useful plants already growing in the garden, especially edible leaves and their cultural and nutritional potential.

Participants helped photograph plants, take notes and contribute to the emerging project Living Leaves: Recipes in Re-evolution. The day linked observation, food knowledge, interpretation and community participation, helping prepare material for future signs, recipes and public education.

August 2025

Bio-intensive edible forest planting day

August marked a major planting day that brought together Ediblescapes’ earlier Grow Bio-Intensive practice with its newer syntropic perennial food forest direction. On a 2 x 8 metre bed, participants planted dense patterns of edible-leaf trees and shrubs including white mulberry, katuk, moringa, aibika and Chinese toon, alongside existing cassava and other support species.

This Action Day showed how Ediblescapes was actively integrating bio-intensive spacing, perennial abundance, pruning-fed fertility and layered edible forest structure. It deepened the garden’s identity as a practical demonstration of regenerative edible forest gardening in a compact public space.

September 2025

Celebration planting and shared recognition

September carried a celebratory tone, as the community gathered after the success of the Nature-Based Tourism Grant. The planting of a second wave of edible-leaf trees became both practical work and collective recognition of how much the garden had already achieved.

This moment acknowledged that Ediblescapes was no longer only preparing for a future vision. It was already being recognised as a living public site of agroecology, food forest education and regenerative community practice. The Action Day reflected joy, gratitude and a stronger sense of collective purpose.

November 2025

Biocultural learning, tasting and edible forest exchange

By November, the Action Day had taken on a more explicit biocultural learning focus. Participants were invited to explore, identify, harvest and taste the edible nature of the forest garden, with small food samples and cultural knowledge exchange forming part of the day.

This shift reflected the broader maturation of Ediblescapes. The garden was increasingly understood not just as a place to grow food, but as a place to recover, share and renew ways of knowing, preparing and valuing food in community.

December 2025

Year-end reflection and celebration

The final Action Day of the year was framed as a celebration of the transformation of Ediblescapes into a living, demonstrative forest garden shaped by permaculture wisdom, agroecological consciousness, syntropic co-creation and deep ecology.

By this point, the Action Days had grown into much more than monthly work sessions. They had become a practical public ritual of regeneration, food learning, community relationship, reflection and celebration. Together, participants had grown not only plants and soil, but trust, knowledge and a shared sense of stewardship.

Closing reflection

The Ediblescapes Community Edible Forest Gardening Action Days of 2025 helped mark an important transition in the life of the garden. What began as a process of preparing for a possible agroforestry expansion matured into something already real and grounded: a public edible forest garden where people learn by doing, build soil and biodiversity together, share food and stories, and strengthen the living relationships that make regenerative community possible.

From 2026 onward, this process has continued through a stronger focus on biocultural food gathering community days, building on the foundations laid through the 2024–2025 Action Day cycle.

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