The community garden experience < community garden people

BUILDING YOUNG EARTH
Western Sydney's first community garden

Alesia Bourner with her plan of Young Earth Community Garden

Alesia Bourner is a vivacious young woman who combines an interest in horticulture with ecologically sustainable community development.

Her move into community garden training and design came in the late 1990s after she completed a permaculture design course with Pacific Edge Permaculture in Sydney. She applied for and was offered paid, part time work with Chester Hill Community Centre in Sydney's western suburbs. Her task was to design and stimulate interest in a new community garden, then to train gardeners in organic growing.

Developing the garden

Alesia learned that patience was a virtue in setting up a community garden. To stimulate interest and recruit participants she organised events and work days.

To guide the future development of the site and to make sure that garden beds, paths and other infrastructure were put in the right place, a garden plan was drawn up.

"I put my ideas together and spoke to a number of people in the community", Alesia explained. "We put this plan together".

The key to developing the site, according to Alesia, was to build it in stages. This kept things manageable and affordable and prevented people feeling overwhelmed by the scale of the project.

"We had to do it stages because we couldnÕt afford to get it all done at once", she said.

The site

The garden occupies a flat patch of land among houses built during Sydney's westward expansion in the 1950s.

A drainage ditch traverses the site, cutting it in half. This made the construction of a footbridge a priority. The site was fenced.

The portion of the site facing the streetfront was developed first. A large paved area shaded by a pergola provided shelter from the summer sun. Vegetables and fruits were established around it.

The project became known as Young Earth Community Garden.

Alesia's advice

Roles like that taken on by Alesia require skills in dealing with people as well as a knowledge of organic gardening. It's likely that people, not plants, will present the real challenges.

For people contemplating this type of applied community work, Alesia believes it is important for them to identify what it is that they want to do - what their passion is. Then they can take action.

"I recommend that people just take on what they want. Once you get into it and get involved in the network of people that you need, the rest will come".

PAGE UPDATED... Thursday, 17 January 2002