“I’D NEVER been a gardener so I thought I couldn’t grow anything,” broadcaster, author, gardener, cook and community activist Indira Naidoo said ahead of her appearance as a keynote speaker for South Coast Field Days 2015 where she will discuss the future of food.
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“I had no idea I would fall in love with gardening,” the former ABC and SBS newsreader said from her home in Sydney.
“I used only 20 square metres to grow what I could and it made me realise we could grow more with our space.”
Ms Naidoo is looking forward to her visit to the Far South Coast in September and the opportunity it will give her to meet new people and share ideas with locals interested in sustainability.
“It’s going to be amazing,” she said.
“Essentially, looking towards the future we have to work with trees and plants.
“So my talks are all about helping people with that mind shift, I’ve been doing two to three talks a week for four years now.
“I’m by no means an expert but because I’m outside the box I see it differently, through my ignorance I think,” she said with a laugh.
After leaving the world of journalism Ms Naidoo became a consumer communications consultant to the United Nations trade arm, the International Trade Centre, in Geneva, and in 2009 she was selected to be trained in Melbourne by former United States Vice-President Al Gore to conduct regular presentations about the impacts of anthropogenic climate change.
“When I came back to Australia I was sitting in my flat above a supermarket and realised that we live in such dense apartment living and everything’s there on the supermarket shelves,” she said.
“After studying world food systems and the pressures around it made me realise my personal life was also part of the problem.
“We think we’re dominating things but nature is always in control.
“It’s important for us to have a better relationship with nature.”
Her first book The Edible Balcony documents a year in the life of Ms Naidoo’s balcony garden, giving a season-by-season account of the successes and also the challenges she faces over the year period.
Ms Naidoo’s soon to be released follow up book titled The Edible City focuses more on community gardens and their relationship with different societies around Australia.
“I’ve always been into cooking but never had time to cook, working nights made it really quite difficult,” she said.
“I’m inspired by growing things in small places, and my new book focusses on five community gardens around Australia.
“One great example is the Wayside Chapel community garden in Potts Point, Sydney where the homeless shelter has used only 200 square metres of roof to grow their own food and it has been hugely successful.
“They have put in five extra bee hives and are even now supplying Billy Kwong restaurant which works with only locally grown produce.
“That’s the main garden I focus on in the book, and the three core ideas are that community gardens improve your health, address isolation issues and help to rehabilitate wasted urban space.”
Ms Naidoo feels that in a world of celebrity chefs, the people who grow the food also need acknowledgment, and even by growing the smallest plant people can connect with nature.
“Even growing small herbs means you’re thinking about something outside yourself,” she said reflecting on her own experience.
“We don’t see ourselves as connected to a tree but we do have the same needs deep down.
“We’re more of nature than we realise.”
