The community garden experience < our gardens

Flemington's big new garden

Allotments awash with annual vegetables and a comfortable shed for rest and socialising are key components of the Flemington Community Garden.

Cultivating Community and Melbourne's Garden of Eden crew have been hard at work in the inner suburbs, helping residents create a...

New garden at Flemington

A new community garden in Flemington, Melbourne, features around 130 allotments, a chook shed designed in an organic architectual style, a rustic shelter, raised garden beds for less-mobile gardeners and hand-finished seats and tables.

The garden was opened on 17 August this year and received assistance from the Garden of Eden community garden crew. Art work produced by the gardeners as part of Garden of Eden's participation will later be hung on the chainlink fence surrounding the garden.

Cultivating Community, an organisation funded by the Department of Human Resources to support community gardeners on state government housing estates, provides a community garden worker, Ailsa Winfield, to help gardeners one day a week.

Flemington Community Garden was set up by Cultivating Community and Garden of Eden as gardening and social place for the residents of the nearby residential towers.

To minimise maintenance and improve access, paths are wide and laid with bark chip. Allotment edges are of hardwood. Behind the shed on the right of the image is a lock-up tool shed.

Raised gardens were built for less-mobile gardeners and are distributed through the garden. The boxes in the background are large worm farms for the conversion of garden waste into fertiliser. On the left of the picture is a double sink with taps where gardeners can wash.

The shelter shed is of rustic design. Garden furniture in the shed and throughout the garden was finished by hand, producing an organic appearance of curving edges. The large, plastic tank stores rainwater falling on the roof of the shed.

Lifting the lid on the worm farms are Morag Gamble (SEED International) and (right) Amadia Lecheta (Garden of Eden Community Garden).

Morag and Amadis check out the Steineresque chook shed.

< top

PAGE UPDATED... Wednesday, 11 January 2006