The community garden experience < our experience

ORGANIC CHRISTCHURCH - community gardens put down roots in New Zealand

Story by Matt Morris, advocate, Christchurch Community Gardens Association

The Christchurch Community Gardens Association (CCGA) was formed in mid-2000 following six months of discussions between community gardens, the Organic Garden City Trust (OGCT), Soil and Health Canterbury and the Christchurch City Council (CCC).

The association is now under the umbrella of the OGCT, with its own membership and committee. The group acts as a forum where community gardeners can share their experiences, share information and support each other.

The OGCT is a creditable body that enables the community gardens, through the CCGA, to act as a legal entity. This gives community gardens a degree of strength and acts as a united body in dealing with the Council.

The OGCT, as umbrella, has offered its services for secretarial and accounting work and helped cover initial costs of stationery and postage. It is also pursuing the cause of community gardening in the city, while maintaining the view that local government holds valuable resources that should be put to use in this cause.

The role the OGCT plays, then, is assisting in a process of directing Council resources to community gardens and for the outcomes of this to be mutually beneficial.

Finding a way to work together

The CCC has, through its Waste Unit, made a number of suggestions about the ways in which it could work with community gardens and the CCGA in promoting and establishing community gardens throughout the city, as it has become obvious to them that community gardening meets their 'triple bottom line' indicators.

At the same time, community gardens have expressed their concern about being used as public relations foils for the CCC and are not willing to be drawn into CCC bureaucracy. There is a justifiable fear that 'green city ideas' can be lost amongst bureaucratic processes and that these processes tend to 'squeeze out the organic life forces'. Another fear is simply that the CCC is a powerful entity, which in many instances, as landlord, can hold community gardens to ransom.

Funding creates positions for sustainable habitats

In 2001 the CCC donated NZ$100 000 to the Christchurch Community Gardens Association to spend over two years as the CCGA best saw fit.

Two staff have been employed, a full time field worker and a part time advocate.

The aim is to see community gardens firmly established in the city, acknowledging, like the UN, that "neither sustainable agriculture, nor sustainable habitats will be possible in the future without urban agriculture."

For more information, please visit the Organic Garden City Trust website:

http://members.tripod.com/OGCT/index.htm

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PAGE UPDATED... Friday, 1 March 2002