The community garden experience < our gardens

BIDWILL COMMUNITY VEGETABLE GARDEN

Bidwell Community Vegetable Garden occupies a house-size block of land.

Apart from the Young Earth Community Garden, Western Sydney has been a desert for community garden development. Now, a team of community workers calling themselves Gardens for Western Sydney is doing something about that. Kerryn Valeontis, a member of the team, takes up the story of one of the region's successful community gardening ventures...

Bidwill Community Vegetable Garden is coordinated by Lynne Carroll, a Community Pride Enhancement Officer with Graceades Cottage.

Lynne, one of the most dedicated and inspiring people I have met, volunteers six days a week organising all sorts of volunteers to clean gaffiti, paint fences, plant trees, pick up rubbish and needles as well as work in the vegetable garden.

A registered supervisor with Probation and Parole, Lynne surpervises between 25 and 50 community service workers including some from Juvenile Jutice in Blacktown. She proudly told me that the normal rate of breach of community service is about 50% but she has a 95% success rate with her workers!

Bidwill Community Garden:

• is a four-way cooperative of the Graceades Cottage Neighbourhood Centre, Blacktown City Council, the Department of Housing and the Department of Corrective Services
• is on Department of Housing land
• is open to anyone in the broader Mt Druitt area
• is not incorporated but has books audited by the Department of Housing
• is supported by a manager, who is a fairly knowledgable gardener, who volunteers five mornings a week and on weekends
• is funded by Christmas and Easter raffles that, according to Lynne, the communiy supports very well.

The garden produce is shared evenly among the families involved with the garden.

It is a no-dig out of sheer necessity as the land had aleady been stripped for building. The soil is solid clay.

Using donated sleepers, the gardeners have build garden beds to a height of about a foot. While it does not have any strict organic guidelines, the gardeners try to use sprays only when absolutely necessary.

Neighbours complained about the compost bins so the gardeners now compost within the garden beds. This seems to be working bcause when I visited, in the middle of winter, there were still tomatoes dripping off the bushes!

The sheds are never locked on site - in fact, they don't even have doors. Lynne claims that the minute she put locks and doors on them they would be broken into. She keeps the main tools off-site.

The money to start the construction of paths (which will make the garden wonderfully accessible) and soil came from a one-off TCIP government grant.

Lessons learned

Although the garden has been received very well by the local residents, Lynne told me some things she would make sure of if she was to do it again:

• the first would be a driveway for unloading all the things the garden needs
• she also feels that night lighting is important and it is something she is negotiating with Blacktown Council
• also, a toilet! (at pesent there is simply a loo tent with a bucket inside which you empty yourself!).

Vandalism no big deal

When I asked Lynne about vandalism she told me thet she had only a few instances which were not very serious. One involved some kids jumping the fence and trampling the pumpkins. Luckily, the pumpkins themselves were not damaged, just the leaves.

Sometimes the children eat the tomatoes, but nobody seems to mind that very much.

Lynne welcomes the children in the garden, calling them her 'bumblebees' that buzz around the garden and do the jobs.

Opening the garden

Lynne looked forward to the official opening of the garden that took place in August 2001 and was hosted by Neil Sandall, the regional director for the Department of Housing in the Western Sydney region. Dr Andrew Refshauge, Minister for Housing, Aboriginal Affairs and Urban Affairs and Planning officially launched the garden.

Students from Chifley College, Bidwill Campus, danced and sang so beautifully no one wanted thm to stop.The students also prepared and served light refreshments.

The street was blocked off and there was a real, positive feel among those who attended that I have observed surrounding community gardens before: a sort of bouyant expectation of growth that the common earth of a garden brings together in all sorts of people.

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PAGE UPDATED... Thursday, 29 September 2005