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The community garden experience < our experience
LOCAL GOVERNMENT TAKES OVER COMMUNITY GARDEN
When gardeners were being evicted from the UNSW Permaculture Community Garden in late 2006, something similar was happening at the Eastern Suburbs Community Garden in adjoining Waverley municipality.
This time it was Waverley Council behind the eviction of a community garden team that had been there since the 1990s. While other Sydney councils show interest in starting community gardens and offer support to citizen gardener teams, Waverley Council’s action makes it a minority of one in the metropolis.
Council dithers then evicts
Council went to the unprecedented and expensive extent of hiring a consultant to report on the future of the garden, then made the decision not to renew the lease to the community garden team. The team was given until February this year to evacuate the site. Curiously, Waverley Council dithered over the future of the garden for some time, holding the gardeners in a state of uncertainty and effectively discouraging any major works on site.
Now, Council proposes to adopt an allotment model and lease plots itself, and plans to hire its own garden coordinator. Without any expertise in community garden management, with little knowledge of the ethos and practices of community gardening, it remains to be seen what eventuates under Council control. Council leasing allotments in a garden is not at issue; what is, is the way the gardeners were dispossessed.
Eastern Suburbs was a model garden which won the 2006 Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network Award for Excellence. Curiously, Waverley Council staff attended the presentation.
Eviction questions Council's green credentials
It is a seeming contradiction that Council takes control of the garden at the same time it employs environmental educators and has an elected Greens presence. It is also curious that, on a Council website page maintained by their Waste Education & Research Officer (last updated 8.8.06), Council announced that it is funding a workshop in worm farming and composting on 24 March this year in the ‘community garden’ (www.waverley.nsw.gov.au/council/pws/waste/Workshops/wormfarm.asp).
Loss of garden = loss of social capital
The garden attracted visitors who came to learn about its innovative and organic approach to community garden management. Whether Council environmental educators and Greens councillors know that urban food production is a solution promoted by the UN to feed our cities, and of the role of community gardens in that, is unknown.
The community gardener’s outreach service to assist new community gardens was testament to the valuable social role that the gardener’s performed.
The loss of community control represents a loss of social capital and community endeavour and the loss of an example of productive and systematic Permaculture design. As some gardeners have suggested, it raises questions about municipal governance and what role local government sees for due process and deliberative democracy.
It is probably no exaggeration to suggest that the garden was perhaps the most productive, public example of a Permaculture food production system in the Sydney region. In terms of high productivity, organic systems, the gardener-team approach to site management and visual presentation, the Eastern Suburbs garden was exemplary. It was also a convivial place, with its monthly shared meal in the garden for which as much garden produce as possible was used.
...Russ Grayson
Attachment 1
Letter from Rob Joyner
March 7th 2007
This is to touch base again and let you know that Vicki and I will not be able to attend the National Conference this year. No doubt delegates will be upset to hear about the closure of our garden and the UNSW garden and all the heartache and disappointment this has caused.
Waverley Council gave the ESCGA (Eastern Suburbs Community Garden Association) a set of conditions to obtain a one year lease renewal. We met all the conditions. We were also given an additional “off the record” condition to reinstate a vexatious member who had been expelled two years previously. This ex-member holds strong connections with many of the staff and councillors. We declined to do this and our lease was terminated.
We believe Waverley Council actions have been motivated by parochial politics and lack integrity. Waverley Council now plans to re-open the site later this year with a paid co-ordinator, private plots and limited membership criteria.
The ESCGA has decided to continue as an association, without a garden, so that we can continue to enjoy the friendships we have made together and to facilitate the transfer of our members and our assets to other gardens.
We have been given heartening support from the Randwick Community Organic Garden who have very kindly agreed to store our equipment and some plants until our members options are clear.
We are also very grateful to the national City Farms and Community Gardens Network for giving us the National Award for Excellence last year. It was a great morale boost to us even if it did not alter the devious intentions of Waverley Council.
I hope the National Conference is a great success and that we will have better news to report in the future once this difficult incident is behind us.
Kind regards,
Rob Joyner
Attachment 2
The complicity of the Waverly Green Party
This strange thing called the Waverley Greens
The complicity of the Waverley Greens in the eviction of the Eastern Suburbs Community gardeners draws into question Greens rhetoric about being a pro-community party.
The only support for the gardeners came from a single ALP councillor, all others, including The Greens, choosing to side with the bureaucracy.
The decision to go against a community group puts the Waverley Greens at odds with their counterparts on Randwick City Council and other Greens in neighbouring Randwick municipality (and with NSW Upper House Greens).
It paints The Greens as a somewhat schizophrenic party with each group in local government areas doing its own thing. This has the potential to alienate support for a party many voters see as a viable alternative to the two big parties, something, in Waverley at least, that is now in doubt.
Attachment 3
Letter to Waverly Greens
Hello... hello... Waverley Greens?
An invitation was made to Greens councillors on Waverley Council to put their case in writing for publishing in this journal. The invitation was, in fact, made three times via email.
Mora Main responded on 23 January, saying she would answer questions put to Green councillors by the editor. Seemingly, none of the other Greens could managed a response.
Perhaps it is the proximity of local government elections that have prevented the Green response. If so, it is unusual because it is usually the nearness of elections that bring out the politicians... and community gardeners vote.
If Mora or any other Greens do respond we will publish their response on the Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network website so that it is on the public record, along with other information about the loss of the Eastern Suburbs Community Garden.
What can we, as an urban garden agriculture movement, learn from the loss of the UNSW and Waverly gardens?
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PAGE UPDATED... Thursday, 7 June 2007
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