The community garden experience < our experience

GARDENS AMID THE TOWERS -
community gardens in public housing estates

Story and photos by Russ Grayson

Fitzroy Estate Community Garden, Melbourne...

Fitzroy Community Garden in inner-urban Melbourne is gardened mainly by Hmong people living in the Ministry of Housing's tower bocks. The garden have paved paths and raised beds for minimum maintenance. Vegetables are closely planted and intensively gardened. Large, covered compost bins make use of the gardener's kitchen wastes.

Waterloo Estate community gardens, Sydney...

The circular shape of Cook Community Garden has been segmented into allotments.

As in Cook, the gardeners at Solander Community Garden live in the surrounding tower blocks.

Cook community gardeners

Allotments at Solander Community Garden are small but allow gardeners to produce annual vegetables to supplement their diet.

Community gardens are blooming amid the tower blocks of housing estates in both Sydney and Melbourne.

In both cities, the estates have a lot in common.

They:

• are the product of early 1960s housing policy
• consist of high rise tower blocks amid open parkland
• house predominately low income residents a high portion of whom are from non-English speaking cultures
• are located in older, inner-urban areas
• are owned and administered by state government housing departments.

Gardens amid the towers

Residents of Melbourne's Fitzroy Estate had been gardening for years before Sydney's Waterloo Estate turned its first shovelful of soil in 1998. In that year, the Fitzroy Estate gardens were joined by the nearby Collingwood Estate gardens in Melbourne.

There are both similarities and dissimilarities in the community gardens in both cities.

Land access

In both Melbourne and Sydney, the gardens have been built on land owned by state government housing departments.

The departments have provided other forms of assistance as well, such as fencing around the Waterloo Estate gardens in Sydney.

South Sydney Council provided funding and expertise for garden construction. They also made council community waste educator, Rhonda Hunt, available for part of her time.

There are now around four gardens in the Waterloo Estate.

Garden type

In Waterloo, Fitzroy and Collingwood, the gardens consist of small allotments gardened by individuals or families.

There are no common gardens as are found in other community gardens in both cities. No fruit trees have been planted.

The Fitzroy community garden consists of raised garden beds made of brick or railway sleeper. Cook Community Garden - the first of the Waterloo Estate gardens - consists of a circular garden bed divided into triangular, pie segment-shaped allotments at ground level. The second Waterloo Estate garden to be built - Solander -across the road from the Cook garden, is made up of raised beds.

Being higher off the ground, raised beds are easier to use for aged or less-mobile gardeners.

In both cities construction was carried out by professionals, in comparison to other community gardens which have been built by the gardeners themselves. This reflects the institutional origin of the estate gardens.

One advantage has been that the gardens, with their raised beds and paved pathways, are low maintenance. Professional construction allowed the gardeners to make use of them quicker than if they had been left to build them by themselves - no doubt this would have been a physical challenges to many of the gardeners.

Crops

Mainly annual vegetables and some herbs are grown in the gardens in both cities. With the exception of vegetable root such as carrots, there were few root crops visible on visits to the gardens.

Annuals are of value in supplying vitamins and minerals; starchy root crops such as potato, sweet potato and taro supply carbohydrates and lesser quantities of vitamins and minerals.

Gardening in the Waterloo Estate gardens and training by South Sydney Council staff makes use of organic techniques.

Participants

Most gardeners are from non-English speaking cultures with Hmong and Vietnamese the dominant ethnic groups in the Fitzroy gardens and Turks at Collingwood.

Sydney's Waterloo Estate gardens are used by an ethnic mix including Russians, Vietnamese, Indonesians and a few Australians.

Garden productivity

There is a dissimilarity in garden productivity between the Waterloo Estate community gardens and those in the Fitzroy Estate.

This reflects:

• the gardening experience of participants
• the length of time the gardens have been in existence
• differences in gardening skills.

The Fitzroy gardens are particularly productive. They display intensive management and close planting.

SWOT

Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats - analysis discloses the challenges and potentials facing the estate gardeners in both cities.

Strengths:

• our experience with the Waterloo Estate community gardeners discloses a willingness to learn about gardening
• the gardens provide a social focus and are venues where people come together
• the gardens appear to be well used, with demand for allotments in the Cook Community Garden outstripping supply even before the garden construction was finished; this triggered the establishment of the other community gardens in the Waterloo Estate
• the gardens provide a small amount of fresh food to gardeners
• the Fitzroy garden displays high productivity and gardener skill and knowledge
• organic wastes are recycled into compost in all gardens
• the gardens provide physical exercise and a shared outdoor venue for participants
• the Waterloo Estate gardens implement in part South Sydney Council's food access policy
• the gardens are examples of the benefits of cooperation between communities, local government and state government departments
• the gardens have been a successful initiative of the UNSW social work students working on placement in the estate; they provided the initial motivation for the community gardens.

Weaknesses:

• garden productivity in the Waterloo Estate community gardens is commensurate with gardener skill level
• encouraging gardeners in some Sydney gardens to practice composting has been a challenge
• the ethnic mix sometimes makes communication and training difficult; it was necessary to bring in a Russian interpreter for training the Waterloo Estate gardeners
  

Opportunities:

• models - the gardens serve as practical and successful models for other housing estate residents and for local and state government cooperation
• health education - the involvement of local government community services staff could bring a focus on nutritional health
• tertiary education - thanks to the involvement of UNSW social work and faculty of the built environment student placements, and the availabiliy of an estate community worker jointly funded by the university, Department of Housing and South Sydney Council, the Waterloo Estate garden project may have the potential to be used as an example of effective social work
• local government - continued local government involvement, particularly in the making available of staff time, would help sustain the garden and continue to foster beneficial links between residents and council.

Threats:

There are no threats which could lead to a closure of the gardens visible at the present time.

The important role of motivators

The success of projects is frequently stimulated by the presence of motivational individuals.

In the case of the Fitzroy and Collingwood gardens, that individual has been Basil Natoli. Basil helped by providing training and setting up the gardens. In doing this, he was supported by Victoria's Ministry of Housing and has gone on to further his work from a position within the ministry.

In Sydney, Rhonda Hunt, a community worker earlier active in the Waterloo Uniting Church community garden, was a key person in stimulating the Waterloo Estate gardens.

Positive examples

It is the participation in the Melbourne and Sydney housing estate community gardens which indicate that they have been the right idea at the right time.

While they meet the needs of estate residents for fresh food and social space, their broader lessons show that cooperation between residents and government authorities can yield mutually beneficial results.

In their own small way, the Waterloo Estate, Fitzroy and Collingwood community gardens make a contribution to cities which are more humane, more liveable.

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PAGE UPDATED... Friday, 1 March 2002