The community garden experience < our experience

KOORAGANG CITY FARM - STILL EVOLVING AFTER EIGHT YEARS

Rob Henderson reports...

After more than eight years we are still evolving, but more importantly we are still here.

A quick history for those who have not been to or heard about our community garden and city farm. Kooragang City Farm (KCF) came into being after a wetland enthusiast and a fisheries habitat biologist convinced the NSW Government to rehabilitate some state owned, degraded farm land and surrounding wetlands that lay in the upper reaches of the Hunter River estuary.

Rob Henderson, project manager, with aerial photograph of Kooragang wetlands site

The City Farm was an ideal opportunity to acknowledge the historic agricultural aspects of the estuary while demonstrating farming alternatives.
Developing a sense of community without neighbours

I was engaged in 1995 to design, then from 1996 to the present to develop and manage the farm.

As you can see from this orchestrated, as opposed to a needs or community driven beginning, one of the hardest jobs was to develop a sense of community toward the farm even though we had no immediate neighbourhood.

Kooragang City Farm is surrounded by the Kooragang Wetlands (1000+ha) and Kooragang Nature Reserve (2000+ha) and is located between the north and south arms of the Hunter river on an area formally known as Ash Island.

An innovative land manager

Kooragang City Farm now manages approximately 150 hectares of land which includes about 90 hectares of holistically managed pasture feed beef cattle, a bush food garden, an organic community garden, a herb garden, a Permaculture orchard, five kilometres of walking and cycling tracks, 10-15 thousand new native trees, 3500 eucalypts in a farm forestry/ grazing layout, three kilometres of protected river banks and many hectares of managed wetlands. Together with the Kooragang Wetlands we have planted over 100 000 indigenous trees.

A dedicated group of individuals volunteer hundreds of hours per year to work, enjoy and share in the daily farm activities. Like most community gardens we rely significantly on the passion, drive and effort of volunteers to keep the garden vibrant and productive.

Collectively, we decided that all of the community gardens (thirty nine individual beds of various shapes and sizes) would be shared, with no personal allotments. This enables all of the gardens, including the surrounds, to be maintained to an equal standard with organic bed rotations, job allocation based on an individual’s capacity, a more cohesive feel and of course, shared produce.

Like many community gardens, our daily numbers vary from no-one to several dozen. This can make garden planning awkward but is a reflection of the diverse group who make Kooragang City Farm their own. We have retired people (76 is the oldest), some who live in a mobile home village with no gardening space, one school of very low IQ children, a couple of early retirement ‘mutual obligation guys’, two special schools for kids in crisis, a few respite care folk, some who are rehabilitating after head injuries and some from a psychiatric rehabilitation service, occasional visits from Greencorps and work for the dole and then there are those who just want to come and garden.

If you are in the area, call in and say hello.

Information: Rob Henderson, Manager, Kooragang City Farm, P: 02 4964 9308 Mobile: 0418 669 438

First published in Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network's Community Harvest 2004 edition

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PAGE UPDATED... Thursday, 7 June 2007