This year, Armidale Local Food have organised their eighth Home Grown Garden Tour.

Sustainable Living Armidale member Jo Leoni said the tour is all about inspiring people to grow their own food in their backyards.

“It’s about showing them what other people are doing, sharing ideas and inspiring people to think ‘I could do that!’”

One of the biggest pillars of sustainable living is to source food locally, with growers doing more commercially and people growing their own.

“Food sourced locally isn’t being trucked hundreds or thousands of kilometres to get to you, it’s freshly picked and not kept in storage – there are health benefits,” Ms Leoni said.

“There are a lot of health benefits simply to growing stuff, it’s a good thing that a lot of people find very satisfying to do.

“You know what’s been sprayed on it so you can grow your own clean food.”

Armidale has a significant sustainable food movement and members of the community garden often get together to swap vegetables and gardening tips.

“In the tour the gardeners are there for anybody to ask questions, people are flowing through all the time but quite often interesting conversations develop over particular problems that someone might have a good solution to,” Ms Leoni said.

“That’s the idea anyway, for people to actually interact, meet some nice people, have some good conversations and occasionally get a really good idea out of it to try.”

People are encouraged to ride their bikes to each garden on the tour and the tour has been designed within the town boundaries to provide easier access.

“It’s fun, some people who have been on the tour most of the time’s we’ve held it really look forward to it – and the gardeners love to have their gardens admired,” Ms Leoni said.

The Armidale Local Food Home Grown Garden Tour is on March 4 and 5.

Tickets and garden maps are available from Armidale Outdoors and Knights Corner Store, cost is $5 by bike and $20 by car.