The community garden experience < our gardens

WOOLOOMOOLOO COMMUNITY GARDEN

Story + photos... Russ Grayson - 2001

Gravel paths and concrete brick garden edges make Wooloomooloo a minimum- maintenance community garden. The raised beds accommodate gardeners with limited mobility.

The garden occupies a corner portion of Sydney Place below the apartment blocks of Kings Cross. It diversifies the use of public open space, complementing the basketball and tennis courts and passive recreation area.

Durable and informative signs provide information to new gardeners and visitors.

A composting sign explains the 'sandwich' method developed by Angel Street community gardeners.

It was a great time to be in Sydney that Sunday afternoon. The late Autumn light took on a pale golden glow a it passed through the foliage of the deciduous trees. Along the footpath, the paperbarks cast their shade over the edge of the garden and the shadows below the Queensland firewheel tree deepened as the day moved on.

We were in the Wooloomooloo Community Garden, in Sydney Place. Wooloomoo is a compact area of medium density housing occupying a small valley between the William Street thoroughfare and Sydney Harbour. Most of the residents are Department of Housing tenants.

The streetscape blends 1970s public housing and late 19th century dwellings that were renovated when the area was rebuilt. Behind the garden, apartments climb the escarprment to Kings Cross. The garden shares Sydney Place with basketball and tennis courts.

Compact and manageable

Wooloomooloo Community Garden was built for local residents by South Sydney City Council. It was designed for minimum maintenance.

The garden features:

• a favourable northerly (sunward) aspect, ensuring plenty of sunlight even in winter
• both allotment plots and shared gardening space, all managed organically
• garden beds edged with brick
• durable, low maintenance gravel paths
• a couple garden beds raised so they are accessible to gardeners with limited mobility
• a small, lock-up storage shed
• enclosed, timber compost bins
• durable metal signage explaining how the compost is managed and providing other information
• ponds as a central feature of each garden bed
• a low fence around the garden’s perimeter.

It is mainly annual vegetables that are grown, however the shared beds have some perennials.

Wooloomooloo’s first garden

This is Wooloomooloo’s second community garden. The first was a smaller area in a park frequented by homeless people below the eastern suburbs railway viaduct.

An intensively managed garden surrounded by a high chainlink fence over which vines were grown, used syringes were a common find in the park surrounding the garden. The rumour was that addicts injected the passionfruit growing over the fence, but given the price of heroin that most certainly was a rumour.

That first Wooloomooloo community garden was closed following council’s granting of development consent for the site.

The new garden

Negotiations for the new garden started in April 1998. The gardeners moved in during November 2000 when the renovation of Sydney Place was completed.

Council continues to support the garden through:

• the provision of infrastructure; council does not grant funds to the gardeners
• employment of a part time worker for the garden’s first six months to assist in its establishment
• extension of council’s public liability insurance to cover the garden
• the occasional delivery of soil
• the provision of water at no cost to the gardeners; council installed a tap when the garden was built.

The Redfern Police stable supplies the occasional truckload of stable sweepings. This is used for compost production or for mulching the garden.

Now that there are around 30 gardeners working the site - they pay an annual membership fee of $5 - a waiting list has been started for people wanting one of the small, approximately two square metre allotments.

Initial problems overcome

Louise, a spokesperson for the gardeners, said that they initially experienced a lot of vandalism. It was mainly local children and has more or less stopped now.

To prevent future damage however, the gardeners would like council to replace the present low fence with a higher chainlink type, a move supported by the youth using the neighbouring basketball court who don’t like climbing into the garden to recover the occasional misdirected throw.

The gardeners welcome children under the control of an adult .

A community asset

The Wooloomooloo Community Garden is an asset in this medium density area where open space is a scarce resource.

Having a compact and intensively planted garden:

• avoids accusations that gardeners set have taken too much public open space
• makes it easy for the gardeners to manage the site
• helps maintain the aesthetics and streetscape of Wooloomooloo, an area with considerable historic significance.

Wooloomooloo Community Garden is a self-managed social enterprise providing a community focus, active recreation and food to the gardeners. A pocket of nature within sight of the towers of Sydney’s central business district, the garden is an example of the benefit of including the opportunity for grass-roots initiatives in residential planning.

< top

PAGE UPDATED... Thursday, 29 September 2005