The community garden experience < our gardens

STELLA MARIS - garden in a school

by Russ Grayson - 1999

A warm sun shone from a powder-blue sky, dispelling the last of winter’s coolness. The first day of Spring, I thought, was an appropriate choice for the launch a new ecogarden.

By late morning, one hundred, maybe more, guests had gathered at Stella Maris High School, only a city block from Manly’s beachfront. They were there to witness the opening of the Stella Maris Community Ecogarden, a project funded by a $25 000 grant from the Northern Sydney Waste Board.

For Manly Council waste educator Michael Neville (Michael is now community waste education officer with South Sydney City Council) the launch was the culmination of over four years of persistence. Manly Council itself must have liked the idea — they chipped in an additional $5000 while the school kicked in some funding of its own.

Inviting the public

To walk through the garden is to encounter a series of mulched, no-dig gardens sticking up like islands from an asphalt sea. Planted to herbs, vegetables, bush food and native plants, the gardens lead to a double pond to be used for aquatic ecology study. There’s also rainwater tanks donated by Reln Plastics, a solar electric panel and pump (donated by BP Solar) which takes water from the tanks to irrigate the garden and an array of compost bins.

Acknowledging the difficulty of what Stella Maris principal Allan Coman described as an "old, barren, neglected and disused part of the school", the garden was tucked into an awkward space between a building and a row of camphor laurel trees. It was built on top of schoolground asphalt which was broken up and left as a waste management measure. Design and construction of the Stella Maris ecogarden was by Marsupial Landscapes — the director of which is Permaculture North’s Jeremy Winer.

I first heard of the garden proposal about four years ago. Since then, Michael Neville has stimulated interest by holding community waste minimisation courses on site — part of the EPA EarthWorks community waste education program. Assisting Michael in the project has been Manly Environment Centre’s Julie Eaton and, of course, the school administration. By inviting the public into the school grounds, the hope is that they will become involved in the maintenance of the garden and take home what they learn about green waste minimisation, water and energy conservation.

Stella Maris is not the first ecogarden on the northside — the first was the garden at Kimbriki tip. And it won’t be the last — the Waste Board plans three more.

Educational value

Sydney is fast running out of landfill space. In funding the project, the agenda of the Northern Sydney Waste Board has been to educate the public about reducing their green waste — the garden and food waste which comprises 27% of the waste stream and 50% of all household waste — by diverting it from tip to compost bin. A total of 125 000 tonnes of green waste is produced in Sydney’s northern suburbs every year.

That’s the public education side of it. For the school, however, the ecogarden presents an environmental and science education opportunity. Senior student and environmental prefect, Liese Rupert — who hopes to start a communications degree in Melbourne next year — told me that students already use the garden for study and relaxation.

Stella Maris Community Ecogarden encourages public involvement in the project, especially the longer term involvement of northside residents.

Information: Manly Environment Centre 02 9976 2842.

Postscript 2005: The garden is no more. The extension of buildings at the school in subsequent years occupied the area of the garden.

Another garden started under simlar circumstances around the same time - the Kimbriki Tip garden in Terrey Hills, behind Sydney's northern beaches - continues in use as a sustainable gardening training centre under the management of horticulture trainer, Peter Rutherford.

The Stella Maris experience indicates how difficult it can be to take the top-down approach to community garden development in which an institution sets up a garden then attempts to recruit community gardeners. Although the Young Earth community garden at Chester Hill Community Centre in western Sydney succeeded in doing this, they succeeded because they hired a person to design the garden and stumulate local interest in participating in it.

Michael Neville, Manly Council waste educator at the time of the garden, subsequently worked for South Sydney Council. He continues to work in the same area with City of Sydney, following its absorbtion of South Sydney Council. Micheal is also a contact for the Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network and a participant in the metropolitan community garden supporters team.

A success of the Stella Maris garden was the way it demonstrated the benefit of school-local-government cooperation. Manly Environment Centre was the go-between, however, with its other committments, the Centre had limited time to put into recruiting gardeners.

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PAGE UPDATED... Friday, 21 October 2005