Vegetables have been planted in Werribee Mansion’s historic parterre gardens to help feed vulnerable families.
The flower beds, famous among gardeners across the world for their ornamental design, are being used to grow rainbow chard and silverbeet which will be harvested to use in meals.
The first vegetables of the season were planted on Monday by members of Werribee’s Sikh and Karen communities.
Once grown, the vegetables will be sent to community groups which provide food to disadvantaged people, including a Sikh temple which produces 1000 free meals every week for anyone in need.
Werribee Park area chief ranger James Brincat said the initiative began as a plan to put a green crop into the parterre, to rest the soil from the nutrient-thirsty flowering crops it usually hosts.
Mr Brincat said the initiative began with the Working Beyond the Boundaries partnership between Parks Victoria and refugee settlement agency AMES Australia.
“We came up with the idea to put in coloured silverbeet which would give us a colourful show as well as organic matter to turn into the soil,” he said.
“But when the COVID-19 crisis came along we were presented with the possibility of food shortages or an increase in disadvantaged, refugee and asylum seeker families going without food over winter.
“So, we took things a step further and decide that rather than ploughing the plants back into the soil we’d harvest them and donate them to community kitchens cooking meals for disadvantaged groups in our community.”
More than 3000 kilograms of vegetables were harvested from the parterre gardens last year.
