ABSTRACT
Biodiverse gardens that marry traditional food plants with introduced fruits and vegetables at school and other learning settings help to promote better health and well-being and support the transmission of traditional knowledge in a variety of ways in Australia. Learning about nutritious foods and healthy lifestyles through garden-based programmes are executed in a variety of ways across mainstream Australia. Connection to country, caring for and drawing from the greater garden of traditional food and healing plants, animals and ecosystems that make up Australia’s rich and diverse landscapes are integral to the languages and cultural knowledges and practices of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. As attention turns to the potential of cultivating indigenous plant species as food crops, it is important to not again appropriate indigenous knowledge and practices for the benefit of others rather than Aboriginal people. Indigenous researchers and writers are helping all Australians to recast modernist ways of thinking and being with mother earth.
