A Yarraville family is pushing for a change to Maribyrnong council guidelines after the council ordered it to tear down its nature strip vegetable garden.
Rebecca Gray said a council officer recently knocked on her door to inform her the garden growing in three planter boxes on the broad nature strip in front of her Hughes Street home contravened council guidelines.
“He said they had to go,” she said. “I said that is absolutely ridiculous; you can’t obviously think that growing grass there is a better use? He said you are not allowed to have solid structures or rocks.
“We have never had any complaints about it. People are always coming by and saying how much they love it.”
Maribrynong and Hobsons Bay councils have no policy on vegetable gardens on nature strips, but neither allows plants higher than 50 centimetres.
Maribyrnong’s Naturestrip Landscape Policy & Guidelines, adopted in 2007, limits the allowable plant types and states they “are to be pruned to a height of no more than 50cm at all times”.
Residents wanting to make alterations are required to complete a nature strip landscape permit application form, but Ms Gray said the council officer said her garden would be refused.
“We used to have plants in the soil but changed it for two reasons – we weren’t sure what sort of contamination was in the ground and we thought it might make a tripping hazard,” she said.
“It’s a very big piece of land, one of those wide nature strips. It has a lot of community support – pretty much all of our neighbours access it.”
Ms Gray said the guidelines were outdated and ran counter to the council’s stated aim of “greening” the neighbourhood.
“It’s so contradictory,” she said. “There are other councils where they have changed their guidelines to be a little more environmentally progressive.”
No plans for change
Maribyrnong council director of planning services Nigel Higgins said there were no plans to update the guidelines.
“Residents are required to keep a nature strip free of any tripping hazards and any protruding objects,” he said.
“The nature strip must also provide suitable space for the provision of refuse and recycling bins, and space for people entering and exiting cars … raised planter boxes would generally be considered an obstruction.”
Mr Higgins said edible plants could be grown directly on the nature strip, provided they complied with the guidelines.
Concerns about ground contamination could be met by importing topsoil or using non-edible plants, he added.
