About community gardens

An evaluation by Russ Grayson + Fiona Campbell - April 2000

< introduction < relevance < impact < efficiency < effectiveness < progress
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PROGRESS

Community gardens are informal entities and lack specific objectives against which to measure their performance. This makes the estimation of progress difficult.

One indicator of progress has been the growth in the number of community gardens in Sydney and elsewhere in Australia since the mid-1990s. In Sydney, it took perhaps a decade after the first community garden was opened - Glovers Organic Community Garden in Rozelle - to reach this point. The take-off is partly responsible to: the work of the Community Gardens Network in promoting community gardening media coverage of community gardening in television programs and the print media the interest in community gardens as social strategies by community workers.

Perception

Another way to estimate progress is to think of it in terms of community gardens as a valid form of urban landuse.

Evidence that government and other institutions increasingly view community gardens as a valid use of public open space is provided by:

• an increasing level of local government interest
• the involvement of the Department of Housing in making land available to housing estate residents for gardening
• Sydney,s Royal Botanic Gardens provision of limited support for Department of Housing gardeners
• the interest in gardens by health services such as SydneyÕs Street Jungle initiative for people with HIV and by a womenÕs health centre
• the establishment of the South Sydney City Council community gardens network linking gardens in the local government area
• the creation, in 2001, of Gardens for Western Sydney by a team of community development and community health workers.

Local government and institutional awareness of community gardening still has far to go. It would be facilitated by including the option for community gardens in local government landuse planning instruments.

Resistance hinders progress

Probably because they come from the community itself, gardeners have met little local resistance to the establishment of gardens.

Where there has been resistance – such as the for a community garden in Glebe in the late 1990s – resident concern usually focuses on:

• the effect on parking space; this should be anticipated in older, inner-urban areas where streets are narrow and parking limited
• odours
• noise
• vermin
• alienation of public open space
• vandalism.

These potential objections should be anticipated in any submission for land prepared by gardeners for local government. They are all valid considerations, some of which have been experienced by community gardeners:

• odour, for instance, resulted in complaints to UNSW community gardeners from an adjoining tennis club; the smells were the product of a poorly maintained compost; the compost was relocated and the gardeners learned to maintain it in odour-free condition
• vermin - rats and mice - are attracted to poorly maintained composts; improved composting procedures is the solution
• vandalism has been experienced by a number of gardens; it usually takes the form of theft of a hose, such as happened in the early days of Randwick Organic Community Garden, or tools; damage to plants may be accidental or deliberate but is not all that common and has not discouraged gardeners; gardens in less secure locations may erect a chainlink fence if they can obtain financial assistance as did Waverley community gardeners from Waverley Council
• open space is in increasingly limited supply in Sydney and communities could react negatively to proposals for community gardens on public open space; surprisingly, this has not happened and community gardeners are now seen as a valid use of public land.

Indications are that community gardening should continue to enjoy a slow progress and that progress is best measured by criteria defined by the gardeners themselves.

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PAGE UPDATED... Monday, 14 January 2002