Ediblescapes

24/08/2025

18/08/2025

🌿 On 16 August 2025 we gathered at Ediblescapes to plant edible-leaf trees — moringa, katuk, mulberry, aibika, cassava and Chinese toon. 🌳✨
A day of hands-on teamwork, closed with a shared meal and plenty of community spirit. 🍲💚

🌱 On 16 August 2025, our Ediblescapes community gathered for a joyful Agroforestry Action Day, transforming a former biointensive veggie bed into a thriving edible-leaf forest garden. Together we planted White Mulberry, Katuk (Sweet Leaf), Moringa, Aibika, Cassava (for its nutritious leaves), and Chinese Toon—multi-nutrient tree vegetables that offer resilience, biodiversity, and year-round food. The day closed with a delicious communal meal prepared by Daniel and Eirinn, celebrating the living abundance we are cultivating together. 🌿✨

18/08/2025

🌱 Ediblescapes Community Edible Forest Gardening Action Day

16 August 2025

This weekend, our community of agroforestry gardeners gathered once again at Ediblescapes to plant and celebrate trees with edible leaves—species that promise both ecological resilience and human nourishment.

Transitioning from Biointensive Vegetables to Edible Leaf Trees

The first garden bed chosen for this action has a rich history. Once cultivated as a biointensive vegetable bed, it supported Asian greens, tassay, mustard, and kale. Over recent seasons, it has been shifting into a syntropic perennial system, allowing self-seeding vegetables and cover plants to flourish naturally.

On this 2m x 8m bed, we embraced the biointensive principle of maximum plants in minimum space, inspired by John Jeavons’ Grow Biointensive method. Into this thriving space we introduced a new wave of edible-leaf trees:

🌳 24 White Mulberry (Morus alba)

🌿 24 Katuk (Sauropus androgynus, Sweet Leaf)

🌱 18 Moringa (Moringa oleifera) cuttings

🍃 18 Aibika / Edible Hibiscus (Abelmoschus manihot) cuttings

Already thriving in this bed were 12 cassava plants (Manihot esculenta). Originally planted for tuber harvest, these plants will now be pruned hard to encourage the production of edible leaves, which—after 15 minutes of cooking—are a safe and nutritious vegetable.

To complete the day’s work, we planted five Chinese Toon (Toona sinensis), along with groundcover species generously provided by JAC Orchids (rare & unusual plants, referred by Reville Saw).

Why Trees with Edible Leaves?

As our working book Growing Trees with Edible Leaves reminds us:

“As humanity faces a difficult century with climate, nutrition, and biodiversity crises, trees with edible leaves provide a pathway forward. The time is ripe for the rest of humanity to follow the lead of farmers and gardeners in the tropics, and in temperate Asia, in embracing a partnership with trees with edible leaves.”

These species are not only resilient but also multi-nutrient powerhouses—rich in vitamins, minerals, and proteins that help address both malnutrition and industrial diet deficiencies.

Managing Growth through Hard Pruning

Another essential principle we practiced was aggressive pruning. By cutting back trees hard, new tender shoots grow back abundantly and stay edible for months, rather than just a few weeks. This technique also extends harvests into the dry season, when fresh vegetables are otherwise scarce.

Featured Species Planted

White Mulberry – Extremely high in calcium, iron, and Vitamin C. Traditionally used in Asia as both vegetable and fodder.

Moringa – Known as the “miracle tree,” high in Vitamin C, iron, and magnesium, with edible leaves, pods, flowers, and seeds.

Chinese Toon – Nutritious leaves with a unique flavor, sometimes called the “chicken soup leaf.”

Katuk (Sweet Leaf) – High-yield, shade-loving perennial vegetable.

Aibika – A mild-tasting, calcium-rich leafy hibiscus, popular across the Pacific.

Cassava (Yuca) – Grown worldwide for its roots, but equally valuable for its edible leaves once cooked.

A Shared Meal to Close the Day

Our work was followed by a communal meal prepared by Daniel and Eirinn. Sitting together under the shade of the garden canopy, we enjoyed not only the food but also the vision of what this edible forest will become—an abundant, regenerative system where vegetables come not only from the soil but also from the trees above.

✨ This 16 August 2025 action day deepens Ediblescapes’ role as a living example of agroecology and community-based syntropic food forestry, where every planting strengthens our partnership with nature.

15/08/2025

🌱 Ediblescapes Update – April to August 2025 🌱

This season we’ve been busy! Weekly volunteer days and monthly Community Gardening Action Days have kept our gardens thriving, with Council inspections confirming we’re meeting high standards for safety and care.

Our renewed licence now includes Article 34 on cultivation restrictions — a positive step that sets a precedent for other community gardens managing edible plants classed as environmental weeds.

The Agroforestry Zone Project has now concluded, but this has led to Ediblescapes being recognised as a Syntropic Agroforestry Demonstrative Site. The Queensland Department of Environment has also approved more trees and gardening tools to support our work.

Action Days have averaged 15 participants, with highlights including the April Kids’ Food Foraging Walk and tours during the Botanical Bazaar Festival, joined by long-time Ediblescapes friends John Palmer and Kyle Grimshaw.

💚 Thank you to everyone who helps make Ediblescapes a place to learn, grow, and share together.

15/08/2025

https://tinyurl.com/GardeningAction

12/08/2025

🌿 We’re humbly proud to have Kyle Grimshaw-Jones & John Palmer as part of our Ediblescapes family.

At Botanical Bazaar, they both led inspiring garden walks & talks, sharing stories, knowledge, and the joy of growing food in harmony with nature. 🌱💚

With two on-site gardens at Country Paradise Parklands garden walks and talks are a big feature of Botanical Bazaar.

Who attended one of the walks with our featured speakers at Ediblescapes Garden or Nerang Community Gardens?🙌🙌🌱

📸: Botanical Busker and Garden Guru Kyle Grimshaw-Jones in

07/08/2025

🌿 When Is a Plant a Problem? Rethinking Invasives in Agroecology

We were recently contacted about Sicklepod (Senna obtusifolia), a plant listed as a restricted invasive species in Queensland.

At Ediblescapes, we want to be clear:
👉 We do not grow or distribute Sicklepod.

However, we’ve been researching this plant as part of a global exploration of edible-leaf trees for food security and nutrition. In parts of Africa and Asia, Sicklepod is a traditional leafy green crop, high in Vitamin A, calcium, and iron. Through farmer knowledge and local practices, its use has been adapted for safe, beneficial food production.

In Queensland, its distribution is restricted — and we respect that. If an opportunity arose to experiment under controlled, non-reproductive, coppice-pruned conditions, we’d only do so in conversation with authorities and with full transparency.

🌾 This raises a broader question:
When is a plant truly a problem — and to whom?
In what ecology? Under what practices?

In unmanaged pastures, a species might behave invasively. But in diverse syntropic food forest systems, with intentional pruning and monitoring, it might serve a vital nutritional or ecological function.

As agroecology practitioners, we don’t learn only from papers.
We learn by observing, doing, and sharing knowledge across cultures.

We’ve put together an in-depth article exploring the nuances of restricted species from an agroecological and biocultural perspective. If you're curious, you can read it here:

📄 Read the full article: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dWKKzwV__4V8_fTNvlHYtE1c6zLcdVhp/view?usp=sharing

Let’s keep learning together 🌿
— Jorge + the Ediblescapes Team

06/08/2025

🌿 Calling all forest gardeners, permies, and edible plant lovers!
Join us on Saturday 16 August for a special Ediblescapes Community Planting Day as we bring together Bio‑Intensive gardening and Syntropic food forest stewardship. 🌳🌱

We’ll be planting crop trees with edible leaves—like moringa, sweet leaf, aibika and mulberry—into our original garden beds, alongside self-seeding greens, living groundcovers and support species. Together we’ll co‑create a layered edible forest that’s productive, perennial and rooted in community care.

📍 Where: Ediblescapes Garden, Nerang
🕖 When: 7am–1pm, Saturday 16 August
🍲 What to bring: Gloves, water, sunhat + food to share & stories of your favourite edible plants!

Let’s grow deep soil, edible diversity, and community connection.
Everyone welcome – no experience needed! 🌾✨

06/08/2025

🌳 Edible Forest Gardening Meets Bio‑Intensive Culture
Join Us for a Community Edible Forest Planting Day
🗓 Saturday, 16 August | 📍 Ediblescapes, Nerang

From Vegetables to Trees: A Living, Layered Transformation
Since 2019, Ediblescapes has practiced the Grow Bio‑Intensive® method pioneered by John Jeavons—focusing on deep soil preparation, close spacing, compost creation, and achieving maximum yields in minimal space. Our garden beds, nestled beneath fruit trees planted since 2017, supported vibrant bio‑intensive vegetable production until 2023.

In 2024, we transitioned to a perennial biocultural food system, embracing Syntropic agroforestry. Now, we’re bringing these threads together—integrating Bio‑Intensive principles into the planting of crop trees with edible leaves, creating a resilient, layered edible forest grounded in perennial abundance.

🌿 What’s Unique? Edible Trees with Bio‑Intensive Roots
Bio‑Intensive and Food Forest practices complement each other beautifully. While Jeavons’ method excels at building soil fertility and efficient yields from annuals, Syntropic forest gardening offers structure, biodiversity, and long-term sustainability—using strategic pruning, living mulches, and in-place organic matter cycling to regenerate soil without external inputs or intensive human labour—just gentle stewardship and the cyclical gifts of the forest.

At Ediblescapes, we’re weaving the best of both:
• Planting edible-leaf trees and shrubs using bio‑intensive spacing
• Enriching soil through in-place transformation of pruned biomass
• Stacking productive layers—from canopy to roots—for nutrient-dense food and ecological balance

🌱 What We'll Plant
While the classic Bio‑Intensive method focuses on annual vegetables, we’re adapting it to include non-annuals, self-seeding greens, and perennial food crops. On Saturday 16 August, we’ll focus on:

• Crop trees with edible foliage (e.g. Moringa, Sweet Leaf, Aibika, Mulberry)
• Self-seeding leafy greens and herbs suited to our climate (e.g. Amaranth, Mustard Spinach, Okinawa Spinach, Perilla)
• Perennial support species (e.g. legumes, insectary plants, and living groundcovers)
• Root crops and edible groundcovers interplanted beneath the trees in bio‑intensive patterns

This approach weaves close spacing, pruning-fed soils, and successional polycultures into a living system that builds fertility, conserves moisture, and grows nutritious food across seasons and layers.

🗓 Action Day Details
📍 Where: Ediblescapes Garden – beneath the established fruit tree canopy (same site as our original bio‑intensive beds)
⏰ When: 7:00 am – 1:00 pm, Saturday 16 August

👩‍🌾 What We'll Do Together
• Practise bio‑intensive hexagonal planting
• Plant and transplant selected edible-leaf trees and shrubs (e.g. White Mulberry, Moringa, Sweet Leaf, Aibika)
• Interplant shade-tolerant herbs, edible groundcovers, nitrogen fixers, and seasonal annuals
• Share stories, skills, and a morning of meaningful, community-rooted care

🌾 Why Join Us
• Learn how Grow Bio‑Intensive® methods integrate with Syntropic forest stewardship
• Build perennial resilience, deepen food security, and enrich soil fertility
• Strengthen community bonds through hands-on collaboration
• Contribute to a living example of regenerative, climate-adaptive landscapes

📋 What to Bring
• A plate or food offering to complement what we’ll forage and harvest from the Ediblescapes garden
• Gloves, a sunhat, —and your curiosity
• Most importantly: an open mind and your favourite edible plant stories to share

✨ A Legacy in the Making
By weaving together the wisdom of John Jeavons’ Bio‑Intensive system with the regenerative pulse of Syntropic forest food systems, we’re co‑creating something new:
A Bio‑Intensive Edible Forest—productive, resilient, community‑centred, and deeply alive.

We can’t wait to plant it with you.
Saturday, 16 August

With deep soil and high hopes,
— The Ediblescapes Team

05/08/2025

🌿 Seeking Cuttings, Seedlings, or Seeds of Edible-Leaf Trees 🌿
Clarence–Moreton Bioregion | South Eastern QLD – Northern NSW

Hello gardening friends, permies, syntropic growers, and food forest kin,

At Ediblescapes (Gold Coast), we’re establishing a biointensive edible-leaf tree zone in our public agroecology demonstration garden. Inspired by Eric Toensmeier’s research into perennial vegetables, we’re seeking tree and semi-woody species whose leaves are eaten like greens—for nutrition, climate resilience, and community food education.

We’re looking to source local propagation material (cuttings, seedlings, or seeds) of priority species that can thrive in our humid subtropical bioregion, specifically the Clarence–Moreton Bioregion (South Eastern Queensland – Northern NSW), where Ediblescapes is based.

🌱 Seeking propagation material for these species:
Chaya (Cnidoscolus aconitifolius)

Chinese toon (Toona sinensis)

Katuray / Vegetable hummingbird (Sesbania grandiflora)

Chipilín (Crotalaria longirostrata)

Pereskia aculeata (leaf cactus)

Gnetum gnemon (tree-vine)

Baobab (Adansonia digitata)

Sicklepod (Senna obtusifolia)

Neem (Azadirachta indica) (used in moderation)

Any other culturally significant edible-leaf trees suited to subtropical climates

✅ Already growing at Ediblescapes (young trees – limited propagation available):
Moringa (Moringa oleifera)

Katuk / Sweet Leaf (Sauropus androgynus)

Aibika / Edible hibiscus (Abelmoschus manihot)

White mulberry (Morus alba) – soft edible leaves

Black mulberry (Morus nigra) – leaves tougher, not used for greens

Cassava (Manihot esculenta) – under evaluation for best leaf variety

🌿 These species will support future pruning demos, community harvesting, and cultural food sharing in our edible landscape.

If you grow any of these species—or know someone who does—please message me here or contact:
📧 ediblescape.nerang@gmail.com
📞 Jorge – 0439 530 315

🌱 Ediblescapes Community Edible Forest Gardening Action Days welcome participants every third Saturday of the Month.

Let’s grow a canopy of edible abundance together 🍃
Jorge Cantellano
Ediblescapes Inc. | Gold Coast

04/08/2025

🌿 Caring for Our Edible Garden 🌿
Important reminder about dogs in the garden

This is a public space and we welcome visitors, but it is also a community edible garden where food is grown and prepared for human consumption. For this reason, we kindly ask that:

🐶 Dogs are not brought into the edible garden area.
Even well-behaved dogs may urinate on or trample edible plants, which poses a health and safety risk for everyone who shares this food.

📜 Under City of Gold Coast by-laws, dogs must be kept on a leash at all times in public parks, and owners must pick up after their pets.

🔴 According to the City’s official Dog Prohibited Areas, dogs are not allowed in places where food is prepared—including barbecue and garden food prep areas.
Because food is grown and prepared on-site, this garden may already qualify as a designated dog-prohibited zone.

🚫 If repeated breaches continue, we may formally request the installation of an official “No Dogs in Garden Area” sign from the Council to protect this shared community space.

“This is a repeated issue we’ve documented. For the safety and hygiene of our edible plants, we ask for cooperation.”

Thanks for your understanding and for helping keep this garden a safe, clean, and respectful place for everyone.
Ediblescapes Inc.

28/07/2025

🌿 Tree Vegetables: Trees with Edible Leaves
Planting a Tasty Forest for a Regenerative Future
Ediblescapes Community Demonstration Project Launch Article

In a time when more trees are urgently needed to address climate change, how marvellous it is to learn that some trees can feed us directly through their leaves! Welcome to the world of tree vegetables—a class of resilient, nutritious, and climate-smart plants that thrive in diverse agroforestry systems and offer hope for both people and planet.

At Ediblescapes, we’re about to begin a new journey: demonstrating, cultivating, cooking, and sharing knowledge about trees with edible leaves. We invite you to walk with us as we grow a living library of edible-leaf trees, integrated into our complex syntropic food forest system, and bring these forgotten food sources back to life in our community.

🌳 What Are Tree Vegetables?
Tree vegetables are woody plants at least 2 metres tall if unpruned—including trees, shrubs, and even cacti—whose leaves (and sometimes shoots and tender stems) are eaten like vegetables. Unlike culinary herbs or spices, these leafy parts are used as a staple green, and many require cooking, though some can be eaten raw.

Species like moringa, chaya, mulberry, katuk, cassava, aibika, and others are popular in home gardens across the tropics, and often sold in local markets. Migrant communities in Australia and around the world continue these traditions, maintaining a vital connection to ancestral knowledge.

The flavour of these leaves is rich and varied—ranging from mild like lettuce to bold like mustard greens or even reminiscent of chicken soup. Their culinary uses are just as diverse: they can be stir-fried, steamed, boiled, fermented, dried, or turned into powders and preserved sauces.

🌿 Trees That Nourish: Nutrition Benefits
Trees with edible leaves are nutritional powerhouses. Many species contain high or even exceptional levels of vitamins A, C, E, calcium, magnesium, antioxidants, and fibre—all crucial in addressing what researchers call “industrial diet deficiencies” that affect billions worldwide.

These tree greens can help fight:

Heart disease

High blood pressure

Osteoporosis

Diabetes

Malnutrition

In fact, some of the most multi-nutrient species found globally—such as chaya, noni, Siberian ginseng, moringa, cassava, and Chinese toon—are all edible-leaf trees. They deserve wider recognition in community gardens, school kitchens, and backyard veggie patches.

🌱 A Low-Labour Food Source
For community gardens and public spaces, trees with edible leaves offer practical advantages:

Minimal maintenance once established

Harvest at standing height (no bending or crouching)

Long harvesting season through pruning (pollarding or coppicing)

High yield with little effort

This makes them ideal for Ediblescapes, where volunteers include older gardeners, time-poor participants, and people seeking to reconnect with land and food in regenerative ways.

🌏 Climate Change and Agroforestry Integration
Integrating these trees into multistrata agroforestry systems enhances biodiversity and sequesters carbon. Practices like coppicing and pollarding stimulate new growth while storing carbon in perennial biomass and soil.

Some species also:

Fix nitrogen, improving soil fertility

Prevent erosion and runoff

Improve water retention

Regenerate degraded land

Tree vegetables are perfectly aligned with agroecological strategies for climate change mitigation and adaptation.

🔄 Regrowth and Season Extension
Most tree greens thrive when heavily pruned, which encourages lush, tender new leaves over extended periods—ideal for subtropical regions like ours. Rather than relying on a narrow window for annual leafy greens, edible-leaf trees can provide for many months of the year, offering a more stable and dependable food source.

🌼 What's Next at Ediblescapes?
Our Edible Leaf Tree Project will soon begin with:

Community planting of diverse edible-leaf species

Public pruning, harvest, and cooking sessions

Interpretive signage and QR-linked resources

A living catalogue of species with culinary uses

Recipes and seasonal tastings during our Action Days

We will also begin to identify and experiment with Australian native edible-leaf species—a field of great promise and untapped cultural richness.

🥬 Why This Matters
As humanity faces a future shaped by overlapping climate, nutrition, and biodiversity crises, trees with edible leaves point the way forward. They offer:

Resilient local food production

Climate-smart land use

Nutrient-dense, culturally diverse meals

We believe these trees are part of the future of food—and with your help, we can grow that future together, leaf by leaf.

🌿 Let’s co-create a landscape where eating from the forest is an everyday joy.

📍 Join us at Ediblescapes in the months ahead—observe, learn, taste, and take home some tree greens of your own.
💬 Follow our journey on social media or visit us in person during our Community Action Days.
📄 A downloadable PDF version of this article will soon be available via QR code in the garden and online.