Veg Out St Kilda Farmers' Market

In October 1998 the City of Port Phillip offered the disused St Kilda Bowling Club to local artists as studio space. Several of them looked at the weeds coming up through the abandoned bowling green and started digging instead, and that improvised response became Veg Out, the community garden that now runs a farmers' market on the reserve beside it on the first Saturday of every month.

Grown or made by the person selling it

Accreditation by the Victorian Farmers' Market Association is the thing that separates this from a general market with a produce section, and Veg Out states it plainly on its own site. The standard behind the badge is simple and strict: everything on a stall has to be grown or made by the stallholder. What that produces on the day is fresh fruit and vegetables, eggs, meat, oils, honey, wine, bread and pastries, preserves, cheese and seedlings, sold by the people who actually farmed or made them. It is a small market by Melbourne standards and the atmosphere is closer to a garden open day than a shopping trip.

The market is not a business with a garden attached. Veg Out Community Gardens St Kilda Inc, a local not-for-profit, runs it, and the takings pay for keeping the garden going. In 2024 the organisation received the City of Port Phillip's Community First Award, which says something about how the garden and its market are regarded in the neighbourhood rather than just by the people who shop there.

Good to know before you go

Peanut Farm Reserve sits just behind Acland Street, so the market pairs naturally with the cake shops and a walk to the beach, and it is an easy stop off the tram. First Saturday is the rule, and 8:30am to 1pm is a genuinely short window for a monthly market, so arriving in the last half hour usually means picking over what is left. Bring your own bags and a cool bag if you plan to buy meat or cheese, and allow time to wander into the community garden itself, which is the reason the market exists and is generally open to look around.