Green Your Laneway

Image by Section8

There is much to love about Tattersalls Lane. Apart from the scrumptious dumplings at the Camy Shanghai Dumpling & Noodle Restaurant – there’s Section8; which started March 2006 as a temporary pop-up bar in a car park and has become a permanent part of Melbourne.

Section8’s greatest achievement is how they’ve transformed the space – re-purposing pallets and milk crates for seating and maintaining the outdoor pop-up vibe while making it a permanent bar. Existing greenery remains and new encouraged to grow. There are planter boxes along the outer fencing and vines flourish inside and out.

Laneways have been a source of pride for Melbournians and a tourist attraction for many years. Yet, most of the 60 hectares of laneways are underutilised.

Even in spaces that are a street art must-see for tourists, like Cocker Alley with its controversial Perspex-case-protected-Banksy, the laneways are dominated by dumpsters, pallets and milk crates.

Through its Urban Forest Strategy the City of Melbourne has had a plan for ‘greening major streets and precincts, but not the smaller laneways’…until now. Their Green Your Laneway pilot project has looked at the 60 hectares (with a further 150 hectares of wall space) as an opportunity to further green the city.

Why?

According to the Participate Melbourne website Greening Melbourne’s Laneways will:

·         Provide shading and local cooling.

·         Improve aesthetics and local amenity.

·         Create ecological benefits.

·         Encourage health and wellbeing flow on effects.

·         Increase landscape permeability (and hence flood mitigation and passive watering).

·         Create opportunities for relaxation and recreation.

How?

There are four different types of greening the City is looking at: park lanes (open areas with vegetation and seating), forest lanes (trees), vertical gardens (growing plants up the walls of buildings) and farm lanes (growing food in planter boxes).

When?

Nominations are open until November 13, 2015.

To get involved?

Nominate a laneway via the online form on the Participate Melbourne website. Other ways to get involved include; volunteer to look after plants, acting as a laneway champion for the project, allowing your wall to be greened and/or contribute funding to the project.

Post by Melissa Hiatt-Boyle