|
The community gardening NSW NEWS...
< back to NEWS
The UNSW Permaculture Community Garden - seeking a solution
> Proposal for continuation of community garden under the management of the garden teams
> view photographs of the newly-fenced community garden
> read a brief history of the UNSW Permaculture Community Garden
> read an earlier published item on the UNSW Permaculture Community Garden
> download (87KB) the Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network's letter to UNSW administration
> want to help?
Hello Everyone,
The campaign to save the University of New South Wales Permaculture Community Garden is gathering momentum (see background and mission statement/proposal for governance below), with support shown by both state Labor MP, Paul Pearce, and Lee Rhiannon MLC for the Greens.
I'm writing to ask people to go straight to the top and lobby the:
Please help send a message to UNSW decision makers to keep the garden open to UNSW staff, childcare centres, students and the wider community.
To help us please download our pdf version of the petition to collect multiple signatures.
Many thanks to all those who've already shown support!
Tim
Proposal for Continuation of UNSW Permaculture Community Garden under the management of the Garden Teams
Mission statement
The UNSW Arthur Street Permaculture Garden is to be an environmental education and research site available to all UNSW students, childcare centres, staff and the local communities, and will provide a working model of:
- urban sustainability and food production
- a creative space for ecological, educational, artistic and cultural activities.
Background
Current UNSW Facilities plan is to close the Garden at rear of 12 Arthur St to UNSW students, staff, and the local and wider communities, transferring the Garden for the sole use of UNSW Childcare centres who will fence the Garden in, remove all 'high maintenance plants' and landscape it. This will mean the end of a unique space of ecological biodiversity (the Garden is currently home to more than a hundred different kinds of plants and trees) as well as a place of social ecology and capital. Moreover the Ecoliving teams (listed below) who have been responsible for caring for the Garden, and for its successes, were not consulted.
Our alternative proposal involves the continued use of the UNSW Garden site by academics and students for on-site teaching, and for group or individual student research projects, which have in the past included projects on wastewater recycling, site contamination, rainwater collections, urban food supplies, sustainable architecture and design.
Coordination of the garden and its multifaceted uses would be the responsibility of a Garden Steering committee, supported by a membership whose annual subscription fee could pay for public liability insurance and site maintenance. This Steering Committee would be accountable to, and report twice yearly, a UNSW management committee of stakeholder academics, staff, students and a representative of the local community.
Continuation of inclusiveness
The Garden committee would work with the UNSW childcare centres and any other UNSW bodies who wished to engage with and utilise the Garden, from student clubs to staff associations.
We would assist UNSW academic staff and students who wish to utilise the site for sustainability education teaching and individual or group research projects.
We would assist the Childcare centres to offer environmental education for children, combining chicken care responsibilities and education with parents and children from the childcare centres and continue our focus on family friendly arts events.
We would continue to work with the UNSW Environmental Collective to inform students of the site and to enable their participation.
We also aim to work with UNSW Foundation Studies and the International Student Office to further facilitate UNSW international students' access and information about the site.
Safety
We will provide a professional built environment design that keeps the Garden safe for supervised children's use without compromising the integrity and usefulness of the Garden as a student and staff research site, and as a place of permaculture and urban food production.
Community
We would continue to work with the current community users such as:
- Eastern Respite and Recreation
- West Ryde Tafe
- Permaculture North
- Eastern Suburbs Evening College
- COFA sculptors
- NSW Storytellers Association
- National Community Gardens and City Farms Association
- many Sydney gardeners, ecologists, artists and singers.
We would also continue the productive relationship with Randwick Council which has invested in and benefited from the Garden, providing landscaping under the figtree for an outdoor classroom, funding the large 2005 community mosaic, donating an area of native plants, and holding sustainability events and workshops.
Many UNSW neighbours and other local people visit the site regularly, offering their household green waste for the compost bins, and to share with their children and grandchildren the delights of the garden and its chooks. Under our proposal these longstanding and useful relationships would be maintained.
UNSW Strategic Priorities and Environmental Plans
This alternative proposal and mission is in keeping with both the UNSW Strategic Plan 2005 which has as one of its defining strategic priorities, the development of
- 'networks, systems and spaces to encourage collegial and social interchange, collaboration and partnerships between ourselves and the wider community'
and the UNSW Environmental Management Plan 2005-2010 which aims to
- 'achieve synergies between environmental learning and the campus learning environment'
and to
- 'advance and disseminate environmental knowledge and applied environmental management through teaching, research and engagement with the wider community.'
For and on behalf of:
The Save the UNSW Garden 2006 Campaign
PO Box 6323, UNSW, NSW 1466
Send an
Tim Luckett and Gour Sen, Garden Team
Mary O'Connell, Arts in the Garden Team Coordinator
Kristina Warton, Animal Systems Team
Julian Craig, UNSW Student Gardening Club
-
< top
PAGE UPDATED... Wednesday, 6 June 2007
|
