Edible Garden Trail celebrated a bumper crop of visitors to their gardens in its third year.
The third annual not-for-profit trail ran over March 7-8 with a record number of open gardens from Blaxland to Hartley.
Money raised from tickets goes back to the community and school gardens via grants. Last year participating community and school gardens received $500 each to purchase kitchen garden equipment. Mt Victoria Public School put their grant money towards a portable kitchen and Kindlehill purchased two bee suits to safely tend their hives.
Four community gardens at Blackheath, Katoomba, Lawson and Springwood were open and three social enterprise Farm It Forward plots, as well as 35 private gardens and they range in size and design, from permaculture patches - complete with goats, bees, chooks, worms and even guinea pigs - to verdant verges and market gardens.
Schools involved include Mt Victoria, Megalong Valley, Leura, Wentworth Falls, Kindlehill at Wentworth Falls, Lawson, Faulconbridge, Springwood and Blaxland East.
Concept originator, Susanne Rix, said the event has grown here, as well as in Sydney suburbs, the NSW central and south coast, and in Victoria.
"I like to think we are saving the planet, one edible garden at a time."
In 2019 Ms Rix handed over the reins of administration to the Blue Mountains Food Co-op who have expanded it to include more school kitchen gardens.
