Jono Ingram is the founder of two community environmental social enterprises in the City of Melton – We Love Aintree and Eat Grow Garden.
Tell us a bit about you and what you do?
I am a keen veggie gardener and I am passionate about empowering communities of people to look after the environment, grow their own food, and take care of the place they live.
Eat Grow Garden is a social enterprise which supports community environment education and awareness initiatives. Eat Grow Garden builds edible gardens and veggie patches in homes, schools, and community gardens, and we also build native landscapes that create habitat for bees, birds, insects and other native animals.
Through We Love Aintree, I am currently busy designing and building the new Aintree Community Garden, which will be a place of education and awareness around issues of environment, climate change, food growing, and sustainability.
I also run environment and sustainability workshops with schools and Early Learning Centres, and help people to think about living more sustainably by growing their own food, caring for local natural ecosystems, and thinking about waste, pollution and in particular plastic waste.
We’ve also helped the community take action through Community Clean Up Days and we have helped communities plant more than 8000 trees, grasses and shrubs through community plantings in Aintree.
What’s your connection to Aintree and Melton?
I have lived in Aintree since 2018, and our social enterprises were founded in Aintree and work closely with other residents in the City Melton, and some of the surrounding areas as well. I want to see the City of Melton and the western suburbs of Melbourne as a place where communities are working together to live sustainably, minimise their carbon footprint, so that we tackle climate change and become a region which is leading the way in environmentally sustainable living.
What do you like about where you live?
I love the different people who call our neighbourhood, and the wider City of Melton home. We have such diversity in culture and experiences which make learning from each other such an exciting thing. I also love the fact that our city is so close to some amazing natural places, like Lerderderg State Park and Werribee Gorge, as well as having some of our own beautiful river and creek systems running through our communities.
Where is your favourite local place to spend time?
Just out the back of Melton, at the top of Coburns Road is Mount Sugarloaf… I love going out here and spending time in the bush. At a more local level in Aintree, I love going around the Deanside Wetlands at sunrise or sunset and hanging out with the kangaroos, ducks and swans watching the sky as it changes colour.
Tell us something people would be surprised to know about you.
I am a keen trail runner and try to get out into some forests, hills or mountains to run trails every weekend. I’m currently training for my first ultra marathon in May, a 47km trail run around Wilsons Prom.
