OGV Green City Initiative

28 May 2019
OGV Green City Initiative

Green City is an Open Gardens Victoria initiative that encourages people to garden, no matter how small the available space.


Green City

The inspiration

Green City is a new Open Gardens Victoria initiative.

Now that we’ve established an annual program of openings and events we are looking to broaden our reach. We want to encourage young people and new gardeners to get into gardening, even if they live in small urban spaces. We want to highlight the community benefits of gardens and gardening so that we can 'green' our cities, build communities and create a better quality of life.

The message is that although urban life means many people are occupying smaller spaces, that doesn’t mean they can’t garden. Indoor spaces, balconies, courtyards, nature strips, roofs and community plots are all areas with potential for growing plants and food.

New partners

With this in mind we have formed some exciting new partnerships.

We are working with indoor plant guru Jason Chongue. Jason has been very successful in encouraging not only young people to add greenery to their homes, but in promoting the benefits of greening the work environment to many businesses. The next workshop with Jason at his Plant Society premises is in June. For more information on this workshop and future collaborative events with Jason, visit our home page. We are also very excited that Jason has joined our Management Committee.

We will continue to work with the Urban Agriculture Forum and the Sustainable Living Festival organising activities which give an insight into ‘urban agriculture’ in Melbourne.

We also teamed up with the 3000acres organisation to open a series of productive backyards and hold workshops around Melbourne from last November through to March.  

It was a great combination, with OGV tapping into our growing network of committed garden lovers, and 3000acres reaching out to their mainly young followers so that together we could show people how they can grow food and garden no matter the space they have.

This project was a resounding success with a total of 1556 attendees, and over 20,000 visitors to our virtual tour series of the best productive gardens and workshops. It’s had a practical outcome, with 90% of visitors saying they would implement something they learned in their own garden - a very happy result considering 5% of visitors said they did not currently have a garden!

For more information on this project, see related article: Green City and 3000acres

In all of these partnerships we want to spread the joys and benefits of gardens and gardening to all age groups. Go gardeners!!

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