Edible Park
Managing & Programming an Edible landscape
Overview
Edible Park is a five acre edible landscape and platform for cultivating community around sustainable living values situated in the business district of Medini City, Iskandar Puteri. It was part of a pair of urban parks called Medini Green Parks,
JOGREEN designed and managed the staffing, maintenance and programming at the park from 2017 to 2020.
STAFFING
Maintenance.
In 2018 we took over the contracts for maintaining the park and with a small core team we hired local farmers on a freelance basis to additionally help us supervise operations. Because it was run as a non profit we were able to increase the gardeners to 8 full time workers. This meant we could devote time to propagation and developing sustainable methods.
Interns
We hired recently graduated interns ( with environment or parks & recreation degrees ) to run day to day operations and develop and run our nature based programming
PROGRAMMING
Farm & Landscape
TOURS: through our edible landscape & farm, creating the connection for children, families and adults, between their landscape and the food they eat. They learn the bounty of nature and also why its important to protect and manage it. Even if kids come for tours again and again, they will have a different experience as things are always changing with different things ripening or ready to eat.
GROWING WISDOM: Hands on experience at the farm where they learn simple basics (soil science, composting, propagation ) about how food is grown sustainably and ethically. We make sure they enjoy the experience but they also learn that it is difficult work, which helps them understand the value of what is on their plates
Plant Based Cafe & Farm Stand
Weekly, farm stand and plant based cafe with local vendor partners. We had cold drinks and a pantry with products grown and prepared at the park. This would get scaled up when we had Green markets and Festivals.
Workshops at the Studio
SUSTAINABILITY SESSIONS eg Soap making, Gardening
HEALTH & WELLNESS eg Yoga classes, Herbal teas
Edible Education
Making and cooking food is a journey into our heritage, community effort and the science of how ingredients are transformed magically into delicious food. Embedded in this is knowledge about nutrition and wise choices.
KITCHEN SKILLS eg Dumpling and Pasta making with flowers
NUTRITION CLASSES eg Sugar consumption, Plant based
Communities
VOLUNTEERS: We encouraged the local community to join us for programming sessions and to help with day to day operations. Parents were tasked to help when their children joined our programs. Senior folk were encouraged to help with light maintenance like trimming and harvesting.
CULTURE CLUB
We developed a community interested in culturing and fermentation of foods and beverages (not including alcoholic beverages) like sourdough, tempeh, cheese, kombucha, kefir, soy sauce etc. We would meet every second Wednesday of the month to share resources, knowledge, and have tasting sessions.
ENTREPRENEURS: See Green markets and Festivals below
Green Markets
Every month the cafe and farm stand would be scaled up to include artisanal vendors and we also encouraged small business owners or hobbyists to try a pop up at the cafe especially plant based vendors.
Festivals
We held two large festivals, inviting entrepreneurs, activists, politicians, chefs contributing to sustainability.
Content & Publications
As we developed more programming we were able to start producing content for our social media and special publications that coincided with our festivals. The content helped the local community understand more about the philosophies that were the foundation of our progamming. We were also able to encourage nature based creativity - photography, illustration, writing and content creation with talent drawn from the local community.
Performance, Talks & Forums
We featured local talent: live performances, talks by local and visiting experts at our weekly and monthly events and scaled that up for our festivals
Awards
2017 Green Champion Award in two categories: “Emerging Green City” and “Smart and Green Infrastructure: Greenfield Development”at Institute of Parks and Recreation Singapore and World Urban Parks partnered Conference
2018 Green Initiatives Award from Institute of Landscape Architects Malaysia
2018 Planning Excellence Award from the Malaysian Institute of Planners Planning