The community garden experience < our gardens

KURRURU PINGYARENDI - turning the circle from fear to cooperation at Gillies Plains

Sue Berry reports from Gilles Plains, Adelaide...

It' s hard to imagine the area where I live without the Kurruru Pingyarendi (Turning Circle) Garden. It started with a group of community members aided by Central Community Health employees, who were passionately interested.

The garden sits within a school grounds which had an excess of bitumen, and hosts a pre-school, community health center, toy library and an Aboriginal neighborhood house.

At the center of these facilities is our lovely garden which reflects indigenous plant species as they would be found from the Adelaide hills to the sea. The garden draws on indigenous people's recommendations for our use of space and types of signage.

In the early days we'd meet every Friday morning to plan, talk, learn from invited teachers, build, paint, drink tea, eat a fresh-picked lunch and other enjoyable things done together. Many volunteers still do this.

Involving the school

Moving ceremonies have been held in our garden involving the schoolchildren and the community.

The school kids have areas to plant and grow food. Mosaicing and other arts are part of the garden as is a sensory area full of color, shapes and scents of interest. Local TAFE students helped build the pond.

It's a fine place to walk or wheel a pusher, to sit or pick herbs.

The unfounded fear of vandaliam

Gilles Plains was not a middle-class area of desire when we started. Traditionally, it has had a high public housing component and there was a huge question about the security of 'stuff' in the garden - would there be vandalism?

We took heart from a uni student's research paper which reported such fears to usually be inflated by garden planners. We decided that believing in community ownership of the garden was a better policy than putting up fences, gates and locks. We have had minimal interference from these imaginary destroyers.

It was important from me that, arising from a reconciliation group initiative, the indigenous and non-indigenous participants worked together in the garden rather than in seperate groups. The indigenous participants were diverse within themselves, being from several Aboriginal nations. An effort was made to be inclusive of all cultural groups from our community.

Gilles Plains is evolving to a multicultural (and happy) place every day. The garden has made the area a more attractive place to live and offers the benfits of participation to new arrivals.

I recommend a community garden as a place or journey which can transform an area rather than being concieved as something that must be hidden out of fear, something which would render it unable to work its magic.

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PAGE UPDATED... Saturday, 13 May 2006