The community garden experience < our gardens

A COMMUNITY GARDEN IN THE TROPICS -
Mackay Community Garden gets going

...by Morag Gamble

Two graduates of Sustainable Futures Permaculture Design Course in November 1999 - Jennifer Emmet and Sue Tyshing - have become involved in a community garden project in Mackay.

It appears that the garden has been running for some time and is now looking to develop some type of steering group, so that the planning, development and decisions making can be shared rather than relying on one or two people.

The steering committee

Mackay City Council's Community Development Officer is encouraging the steering committee.

The first steering committee meeting was recently held and it seems that their could be a great opportunity to further develop our group decision making processes and our permaculture design processes.

The future

Morag and Evan have been invited to travel to Mackay to run workshops in community group gardening and permaculture design in the next 6-12 months.

At the moment the gardeners are working on learning about each others reasons for wanting to be involved in the community garden, this will become the basis for our goals and ethos. They are also just getting to know each other.

One of the members had already produced a design plan that the group has been working to but it has been identified that no person felt that they could do anything without that person’s permission and guidance. So they are working on ways that they can all gain a greater understanding of the current plan and also have to opportunity to input suggested changes.

Jen introduced them to the process of site element assembly and hopes to get us as a group to identify what we want to have in the garden. She has also talked about the importance of observation and hopes to share some observation ideas with those who are interested.

Contact: Send an to Jennifer Emmett

PAGE UPDATED... Monday, 15 January 2007