The community garden experience < our gardens

GARDENING THE UNIVERSITY

It was unexpected for a bunch of inexperienced gardeners. When the Randwick Council annual award for the most productive garden was presented to them, however, the gardeners accepted it as recognition of their hard work in developing the site over the previous two years.

For the core group behind the University of NSW (UNSW) Community Permaculture Garden, the first two years had been a time of establishment. Now that they had fully developed the initial 20 square metres, they were ready to improve the garden and to look to the surrounding community to find new participants.

The garden received the council award three years ago. Now, a little over five years since the garden made its hesitant start, it is looking better than ever before.

The garden still relies on an enthusiastic core group of students, a university staff member and a number of people from the community.  Now, however, the garden has become more widely known and attracts numerous visitors. It has become a training venue for adult evening college organic gardening classes and for community-based permaculture design courses.

Annual vegetable beds with food forest behind

Gardening is like surfing

For community gardener Matthew Mehennan, community gardening has a lot in common with surfing.

“I had grown up with surfing so I had a respect for nature”, he said. “But to interact with the garden – to get your hands dirty, the practical side of it – that was challenging”.

“The community garden is basically an oasis. It’s very peaceful. Going back to the surfing analogy, when you’re surfing it’s peaceful, not much is on your mind, it was a place to relax… in the water. If people came out and surfed with you then you talked with them out the back. The garden’s the same… if people come into the garden you usually stop work and chat to them”.

It was the experience of gardening that introduced Matthew to the idea of community.

“Up until a few years ago, I was aware of the environment and thinks like that, but not of genuine community. For me, the garden is permaculture and community - those things are really important to me now.

“One of my main aims is to get as much self-reliance as possible… anywhere from 25 to 75% of your main meal at night you can get out of the garden.

“The garden started off as a student initiative and as the students got more confident it became a community garden – for staff, students and community. I’m a community volunteer”.

Like Matthew, Michael White has been coming to the garden for about two years. His reasons for being a community gardener are different to Michael’s.

“Why do I come here? I come here primarily because I happen to like doing this. I wouldn’t say it’s for altruistic environmental reasons – they come as a second thing. What I like doing happens to be something that’s good for the environment. Just pottering around in the dirt is something I like”.

Community gardening supplements Michael’s university studies in botany and his TAFE studies in horticulture.

“I suppose personally it hasn’t been too much of a challenge. I like coming here and doing my gardening. The frustrating thing is knowing what you want to do and getting enough people to do it, that’s the toughest bit”.

Eilean Watson works at the university and has been with the garden for almost four years.

“I got involved in early 1996 after I did a permaculture course”, she explained. “I come here mainly to be in touch with nature, to get my hands dirty, to play with the compost, plant anything, be it veges of flowers. I want to plant some flowers to give the garden a little bit of balance. It seems to have gone too much on the vegie side at the moment, so flowers will bring a bit of femininity into the garden and provide some cut flowers for people to take home — as well as the vegies — to bring a bit of nature back into sterile apartments.

It is this idea of bringing home produce from community gardens which makes them relevant to our cities.

This is because the shape of major Australian cities is changing; people are choosing to live differently than they would have even a decade ago. Driven by a NSW government policy to encourage medium density residential and commercial development around major railway stations, apartment construction has seen boom times in recent years. Many people are replacing the ‘Australian dream’ of a house and garden in the suburbs with an apartment and balcony close to public transport.

The trend towards apartment living makes the availability of public open space an important issue for our cities. People need open space for relaxation and recreation, and this is a role community gardens can easily fulfil in addition to providing the opportunity to produce fresh, nutritious food for an increasingly health-conscious population.

Community gardens provide one other service to urban people — the chance to meet their neighbours in a space which is safe and which welcomes their children. It is no accident that, for many community gardeners, it is the social side of gardening which is as important or more important than the growing of food.

Eilean, too, is an apartment dweller who enjoys both the social side and the solitude of gardening. “I like to come to the garden and just potter. For me, it’s a place to relax, a place not so much to escape, but to relax and get in touch with nature. Often I’ll come at lunchtime and munch on something that’s growing, I’ll check things and then go back to work. I tend to be more of a muncher here. Even the lillypillies have been fat and juicy and nice… I like a few little cherry tomatoes or a little bit of celery… so I like grazing.  For me, it’s an hour of total relaxation.

As one of the UNSW community garden’s core group of volunteers, Eilean took on the job of garden coordinator because nobody else was interested. “It’s a side of a community gardening that not too many people want to do because we all want to get our hands dirty… it’s often a side that gets neglected.

“When I got involved we had a pretty messy shed in the sense that the tools were all over the place and you would spend half an hour finding something. We started tidying it up. There’s a tool board now and it seems to work”.

Eilean has found that people skills are as necessary as gardening skills for successful community gardening. There are problems to solve, decisions to be made, conflicts to resolve. “It’s the human communications side. I find that trying to work through a consensus seeking system, instead of people doing what they want without asking others, that’s been the hardest. We’ve got to try to allow everyone to have an opinion. You’ve got to try to balance things, you’ve got to have the process bit – about how you do things  - and then the outcome thing which is actually doing it”.

Defining the layout

With the initial 20 square metres of the garden fully planted out, the gardeners colonised an adjacent area of disused land. A large composting system, storage shed, sitting area and apple, fig and olive trees have been established.

In layout, the garden takes the form of a compact area of annual vegetable beds enclosed within the curve of a tree and shrub cropping area. As the garden has grown it has taken on the appearance of a forest — a food forest — and has an ambience of seclusion, peace and refuge.

“It’s a lot different than your average community garden”, explained Michael. “We don’t concentrate on the veges so much. We just wouldn’t get around to giving them the attention they need.

“The garden is divided into zones. There’s a zone one, which is the vegetables, which might be about a tenth of the area. Nine-tenths is fruit trees, ground covers, perennial herbs… things like that.

“From a personal point of view, just learning about all the plants and how to grow them, having a place to do all the stuff I’ve read about in books, has been a success”, Michael said.

Having most of the garden planted to perennial crops – fruit trees and shrubs, culinary herbs and perennial vegetables – reduces maintenance and frees up the gardener’s time.

“Crazily enough, about the best thing I ever ate was an apple off the trees here”, said Michael. “I know we grow a lot of rare and exotic things here, and you think ‘an apple – big deal’. But for someone growing up in Sydney, apples aren’t a normal thing that you have in the backyard. So it was good, it felt like real peasant food. And nibbling on the barley down the back as well, you know, that’s a crazy thing to grow in a suburban situation, but we grow it just to see what it’s like”.

Insect pests are not a major problem I the community garden, however there are some. "It’s a matter of getting used to them I suppose. I’ve got used to eating figs with fruit fly larvae in them. I say ‘what the heck, I’ll eat it anyway… extra protein!’” said Michael.

Compost

All gardens need nutrients, and the approach of the UNSW community gardeners has been to turn the waste problem of the nearby racecourse into a solution. Stable sweepings are mixed with food wastes from a nearby organic food shop and composted.

When it came to construction of the garden’s large composting system, Eilean explained that it was a little confusing.

“One person wanted to build it one way and another person wanted to build it another way. No one actually had the skills. I remember the first time we tried it. None of us quite knew how to put the thing together. Even hammering nails was difficult for some of us. So then we thought a bit more, and a few months later we had another open day and we had a lot of people. Those with building skills showed is how to do things and the compost got three-quarters of the way there. A few months later we had another open day and we finished it. It took a failure, a success and a finishing off”.

The eight-bay compost system is designed for ease of use and is capable of handling a lot of material. One bay is set aside for grass and leaf litter, another houses a plastic compost bin into which neighbours place their kitchen scraps. This bin is enclosed to reduce the mouse population. Clear labelling shows what goes into each bay.

“The other big success”, explained Eilean, “is the environmental education shed. A neighbour gave us the shed and we moved it onto the site. We found some carpet for it and then found a book case at the uni that no one wanted and we’ve put a table, chairs and journals and books to share”.

Better than a holiday in Bali

A community garden is not just a place to grow food. It’s also a place where people come to make friends, to relax and learn. There is a larger dimension to community gardens, however, and that has to do with their role in the city. “How do community gardens relate to the city?” asked Michael. “They’re crucial. You have to bring gardening and farming back to the cities if you want to be sustainable. I see people having gardens in their own places. Community gardens would be areas for composting and fruit trees - communal areas.

“The garden gives people a chance to get their hands dirty. As a person who loves plants I can’t understand why someone wouldn’t garden. If you are not doing some gardening, then what are you about? If you’re not interested in growing food, what’s the point? Just growing food is like the tip of the iceberg, really. I suppose it’s purposeful and economic recreation — economic in the sense that it’s producing something of use — and you come here and enjoy yourself and it doesn’t cost you anything like going to the movies or on holidays to Bali.

Alex Tuck, who lives nearby, has different reasons for coming to the community garden. He’s a year ten student at Scott’s College who is about to set out to achieve the Duke of Edinburgh Silver Award. That will involve a commitment of six months voluntary community work, and Alex has selected the garden as the site for his community work.

The award is not the only reason Alex comes to the garden, however. As he explains it:  “I like gardening. It’s relaxing.  It’s fun. If I didn’t find it fun I wouldn’t be here”.

The same could be said for all community gardeners.

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PAGE UPDATED... Wednesday, 6 June 2007