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The UNSW Permaculture Community Garden - seeking a solution
> proposal for continuation of community garden under the management of the garden team
> 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?

...By Russ Grayson, Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network, NSW.

THIS BACKGROUNDER was sent to the Permaculture network on 1 November 2006 as a means of clarifying my position regarding the dispute over the future of the UNSW Permaculture Community Garden....

FOLLOWING CIRCULATION OF A REQUEST FROM UNSW Permaculture Community gardeners, to consider signing a petition in support of their retention of access to the garden, two email responses asked why the garden should not be handed to the UNSW childcare centre. The respondents said there had been talk of a new garden at UNSW.

Other email responses have fully supported the community gardeners, including community gardeners elsewhere and political leaders in the Eastern Suburbs.

The issue raises questions about the security of tenure for community gardens and other community-based enterprise on land owned by universities and other institutions.

For clarification, following is a backgrounder to the issue.

opinion piece, 1 November 2006...

GOODBYE CORIANDER, FAREWELL MACADAMIAS

...the strange, twisted tale of a garden and those that would see it wither

Personal role

My input into this issue stems from my NSW coordinator role for the Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network. I have tried to keep abreast of the contest between the UNSW Permaculture Community Garden members trying to save their garden and the UNSW's move to reclaim it.

I do not speak for the Permaculture community gardeners. Rather, I outline what I believe the issues are. This information I have gained through conversation, emails and meetings.

To me, the tussle over the fate of the community garden raises questions about the values that we, as permaculturists, hold as important.

From the perspective of over 20 years in the Permaculture movement, I must say that this is the most unevenly-matched, the most bitterly fought and most locally divisive challenge that has faced Permaculture in this region. It takes little imagination to realise that the gardeners are very much the underdog in opposing a big university with all its influence and power, however history shows the value of powerless people standing up for themselves.

The regional context

First, may I put the rather sad saga of the UNSW Permaculture Community Garden into a regional perspective? That perspective is one of the impending loss of three community gardens in Sydney. Two of these are in the Eastern Suburbs. One, elsewhere, has already gone.

To start with, there is the UNSW garden in question. Then there is the Eastern Suburbs Community Garden in Bondi Junction. The gardeners there may soon become the victim of questionable Waverley Council processes that also demonstrate a lack of due process. They could result in the council shutting the garden down and pushing the gardeners out. The garden won the 2006 Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network Award for Excellence and is perhaps the most productive of Sydney's community gardens.

There is also the Western Suburbs community garden on church land. The priest, so I got the story, decided that a car park has greater value than a food production facility for the low socioeconomic demographic of the area.

So, in the populous Eastern Suburbs, the Randwick Community Organic Garden may by next year be the sole remaining community garden in the region.

A clash of values

I think there is an overarching value or principle at work here - that of a small group of permaculturists standing up to a huge bureaucratic organisation with lots of influence and power. The impression is of a clash between open and democratic, community-based values and the corporate, heirerchical and, in this case, exclusionary values of the university.

But there is another clash of values for those with allegience to Permaculture. It is the clash of the corporate, top-down way of doing things with the grass-roots sustainability approach of community self-development.

Due process - something seemingly lost along the way

The concept that we know as due process is about fair treatment. It is this that the gardeners believe is missing.

First, they say that the university made no attempt to consult with them, as stakeholders, in regard to the closure of the UNSW Permaculture Community Garden. The decision, it seems, was taken quite some time - around two months, so I am told - before the UNSW Ecoliving Centre, a university facility, told them about it at a gardener's meeting. This delay invites speculation as to the reason behind it.

Then the gardeners were even denied the chance for a last visit to their chooks. The birds were simply 'disappeared' from the site without the chook team being informed. Whatsmore, the listserv used by the chook team was taken down by the Ecoliving Centre, again without consultation or notice, say the gardeners. It's that 'due process' thing again, or, seemingly, the lack of it.

The community Permaculture garden has been a multi-user site. The Arts in the Garden team, which puts on community arts - singing, readings, mosaic workshops, festivals, food etc - are now deprived of a venue. They were responsible for bringing thousands of people into the community garden and for the site becoming known in the Eastern Suburbs as a community arts venue. Now, that is gone.

Whatsmore, Randwick City Council, when it used the garden for its sustainable living workshop series, put considerable funds into the garden to bring it up to a standard of site safety appropriate to a public venue. Hard paving and an outdoor classroom were designed and built by a Permaculture landscape architect and horticulturist, hired and paid for by council's sustainability education team with a lesser contribution from the University.That improved the site to a standard at which it complied with council needs. A rationale for council doing this was that the Ecoliving Centre and community garden were accessible by the local community.

The deprivation of access (that includes all community access, not just the gardeners) that would come with the handover of the site to the university's childcare centres has been a blow to the garden team, the student garden club, the animal systems team and Arts in the Garden team and they are deeply hurt by the university's action (and by the UNSW Ecoliving Centre's, as a facility of the university).

Why not just leave the garden and find another?

The university's idea of building a new garden when the Ecoliving Centre moves to the opposite end of campus - some time in 2007, supposedly - mentions access by students. There is no mention of access by the community.

Yet, even this mooted garden seems encased in uncertainty. According to the UNSW website article about the childcare takeover, a garden is only 'being considered'.

The article states:

"A separate organic garden for students is being considered for the main campus in the New Year, expanding the University's commitment to environmentally friendly practices. Students will be encouraged to contribute to the new garden's design process."

Starting another garden for students might be a good idea, however there is no benefit to the broader Randwick community in a student-only garden. Once again, absolutely no mention of access by the local, non-university community as is enjoyed in the current community garden.

The article suggests that the children will gain from as-yet-nonexistent 'environmental education' (the childcare centre management only recently attended an early childhood environmental seminar to find out about the subject). Interestingly, they speak as if the childcare centre's children are presently denied access to the community garden. I understand that the childcare centre has been on the chook team, tending the birds a day a week, and they were offered access to a garden bed bordering their centre that served as a training garden for organic gardening classes run by Eastern Suburbs Community College.

This rather shallow article, with its selective presentation of information that represents only a university point of view (dare we say 'biased'?) leaves the informed reader with the impression that the UNSW is being less than honest in its public portrayal of the issue. It is a case of spin by omission. The article is high on feel-good motherhood allusions - children in the garden, a 'to be considered' new garden etc - but exceedingly short on detail. And the students and community gardener's perspective? Not a mention.

It is this that is a concern of the Permaculture gardeners. Since the community garden opened in 1995, local residents have made use of it for gardening, for leaving their garden and kitchen wastes for composting and to attend the performances of song, music, readings, festivals and food that the Arts in the Garden team have put on, as well as for local children to enjoy visiting the chooks and playing in the garden.

Ironically, the university claims in its promotional literature that it supports community engagement (UNSW Environmental Management Plan 2005-2010) however, in the circumstances, this starts to look nothing more than another motherhood statement.

Another reason why the gardeners contest the closure of their garden is because of the time, effort and funds they have invested in developing it since 1995. There are quite a number of mature fruit trees and shrubs in a food forest arrangement, chicken yard infrastructure and perennial and annual vegetables, as well as supporting facilities such as the propagating shed. They have learned about caring for fruit and nut trees as they went along and from advice freely offered by people in the community who have horticultural knowledge. This, I think, is to the gardener's credit.

The impending exclusion of the student and community gardeners and the loss of their garden is as if someone has spent time and care making a home garden and is then ordered to give it to someone who has had no association with it, has made no effort to work it and who has little knowledge of how to maintain it.

Is there some analogy here to the incident of the destruction of the Permaculture garden in Melbourne's Thomas Street (see Rooting for the Vandals, page 83, Arena magazine June-July 2006)? That incident was highlighted on the pemaculture-oceania listserv before it was hastily and quite unnecessarily shut down and postings about the UNSW community garden banned.

Through the process of caring for this piece of land, the gardeners have developed an attachment to it and have formed interpersonal bonds based on cooperation, sharing and mutual learning. The process of gardening has seen them implement the three ethics of Permaculture - care of land and people and the sharing of surplus resources (including knowledge).

The notion that simply by moving the Ecoliving Centre and making a new, still 'to be considered' garden for students, and then it will be business as usual, hides the fact of these overarching aspects about public access and the loss of investment.

What about joining another community garden?

We have already learned that two of the Eastern Suburb's community gardens may soon be lost. That leaves one community garden in one of the city's most densely-populated regions.

That community garden - the Randwick Community Organic Garden - has been supported by Randwick City Council's sustainability team, however its capacity to absorb more people is limited by its size. Randwick and the Eastern Suburbs, with the second highest population density in the southern hemisphere, has limited open space for the development of further community gardens and community arts venues. That is why the loss of even a single garden matters.

Loss of community access deprives local people of access to a site they have been able to visit since 1995. There is a critical need in the Eastern Suburbs for sustainability landuses of this type. Here, something like 48 per cent of residents live in apartments and flats or similar medium density dwellings, and those with garden space in their duplexes, town houses and single unit dwellings usually have only a very small area to garden.

How will the UNSW childcare centres manage the garden?

How will the childcare centre maintain a Permaculture garden? Where is their expertise? Where are their qualifications?

That these are lacking is indicated by a message to parents the childcare centre management, so I was told, sent out asking for volunteers. How many have any idea of the principles and practices of Permaculture design and organic gardening?

I believe the Ecoliving Centre, which is to be moved to the far side of campus, has alluded to support and advice, however the logistics of doing this have not been stated and it seems to be little more than a vague idea designed to create the impression that all is well and to smooth the university's handover of the garden.

Local leaders offer support

It is interesting that the university's approach is not that preferred by influential voices in the Eastern Suburbs.

At the launch of the Sydney Food Fairness Alliance in Parliament House in October, the fate of the community garden was raised by prominent Greens MLA, Ian Cohen. The Eastern Suburbs Greens have been supportive of the gardeners, writing to the vice-chancellor suggesting that the university talk with the gardeners, as the gardeners want. The ALP has also offered support and Randwick City Council raised the issue at a council meeting and resolved to write to the vice-chancellor to encourage talks.

The community gardener's petition has, so I am informed, gained hundreds of signatures and other respondents have emailed the university.

So, what does it all mean for Permaculture?

Were it to come to a decision regarding who to support, it seems that the choice is between supporting a small, powerless group of Permaculture gardeners or a big, powerful university and its questionable approach to dealing with the public.

That's how I see it, anyway. And, for me, permaculturists must judge the issue according to the very basis of Permaculture, that which it is founded on. Those are the three ethics - the care of people and land and the sharing of surplus.

If Permaculture people decide in favour of the university, then I think we have to take a long, hard look at ourselves and our notion of what Permaculture is, and ask ourselves, honestly, whether Permaculture represents a viable alternative to the managerialism that pervades organisational decision making in modern society and to those aspects of modern life we would seek to improve.

Why? Because process and the relations between people, and between people and organisations, is as much a part of sustainability as is food, energy efficient shelter, water conservation and health care. It's all about that much-touted triple bottom line of sustainability - environment, economy and society. It is no good, even if we have all these material benefits, but we are subject to the whims of decision making that are beyond our power to influence.

Honestly, I can never imagine Bill Mollison standing up for a big institution like a university in these circumstances.

In this, I do not advocate the exclusion of the childcare centres but their inclusion, as the students and community gardeners propose. Their environmental education can be a reality, as, surely, can community access to a multi-user community garden.

Taking that simple step forward

I undertand that the Permaculture community gardeners have proposed talks with the university that could lead to a resolution of this issue and that preserves community access, shares control with the university and makes it possible for the childcare centres to access the garden. The university's acceptance of talks would put it in better standing than ignoring the request and excluding the community.

The university, however has offered the gardeners nothing, creating the setting for a win-lose outcome with all the anger, disillusion and division that such outcomes generate.

It's difficult to discern fact in contested issues such as this. As I explained, my position was largely determined by my role as a coordinator for the Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network, which predisposes me to support the gardeners.

Actually, I find the whole business unfortunate and, in retrospect, unnecessary. I think that a conciliatory approach would have avoided the angst experienced by some of both parties and that a resolution could be developed to include the gardeners, university and childcare centres.

Now, it is up to UNSW to start talks with the Permaculture community gardeners as a first step towards making the garden a multiple-user site that meets the needs of all. Surely, doing that can't be all that difficult?

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PAGE UPDATED... Friday, 4 May 2007