Red-veined silverbeet growing in a Brunswick East garden bed

Everything you grow is connected to someone who needs it.

Rootwork links Melbourne's community gardeners. Track what's growing, share the surplus with the neighbours who asked for it, buy a box from your street's spare, and plant next season what the neighbourhood is short of.

New here? Join your community garden in four questions.

People → communities

Start with the garden down the road.

Members join the community garden nearest them, chosen on a map by where they actually grow. Every hub has its own forum, events and needs board, run by its organisers.

Choose a community Open the CERES hub

Members walking between beds at a community garden on a spring morning

Gardens → crops

A garden designer that knows the street.

Give it your space and your sun. It draws three square-foot layouts and explains every choice, including which crops your neighbours are asking for that nobody grows. Plant one, and every crop is tracked from seed.

Try the designer See a real plot

"Fill the street's gaps": 12 squares of coriander because 14 neighbours want it and 2 grow it.

Crops → harvests

Sell the zucchini glut before it's picked.

Crop tracking forecasts how much each plant will give and when. When a forecast runs past what a household can eat, the grower pre-lists the surplus, and the people who asked hear about it months ahead instead of meeting a pile of marrows on a doorstep.

See the forecast Pre-list it

Priya's Lebanese zucchini, Bed 1 4.2 kg forecast around 12 January, about 2.2 kg more than she'll eat

Sown
02/09

Sprouted
now

Growing
~05/11

Picking
~20/12

Finishing
~12/01

Marketplace → requests

Surplus meets demand, and you can hear it land.

Growers gift, swap or sell at pickup points, never from a home address. Neighbours post what they want. Rootwork ranks who should get each harvest by need, distance and reliability, and gives both sides a handover code.

Open the match web Browse the market

Tap a neighbour to match them. Turn sound on first.

Requests → local demand

Every "I want" becomes a planting signal.

Requests from members and supply from everyone's crop tracking add up to a live picture of what the neighbourhood eats and what it's short of. Organisers see it in the hub; the network sees it across every community, and can nudge the growers who could fill a gap.

What Brunswick East needs Food intelligence

Local demand → better growing decisions

"What should I grow?" answered for your plot.

Recommendations weigh unmet local demand, your sun and space, the season and your own harvest record, and say why. They also say what to skip: when 19 neighbours already grow zucchini, a twentieth is a waste of a bed.

See my recommendations

How the network pays for itself

Gifts and swaps are free. Revenue comes from what households and councils already spend money on.

A box of mixed vegetables from local growers

Veg boxes from the street's surplus

Composed each week from several growers' spare. 82% of the price goes to the growers, named on every item.

See this week's boxes

A garden crew member with a spade in a raised-bed garden

Garden builds and maintenance

Raised and wicking beds, seasonal maintenance and soil testing by vetted local crews, booked and paid in the app.

Book a build