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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 an earlier published item on the UNSW Permaculture Community Garden
> read a personal response to the controversy
> 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.

UNSW Community Permaculture Garden - a brief history

IN LATE 1994, Fiona Campbell and the author were approached by Leith Sharp from UNSW Student Guild to run a one-week Permaculture course. The aim was to equip students with the knowledge to design and establish a community food garden on university land in Arthur Street, Randwick.

Approximately 30 – 35 students participated in the course during their end of year break. The design of the garden and the skills necessary to managing it formed the theoretical core of the course and the practical component was carried out on-site. University staff and students were invited to become involved with invitations made to the local community as well.

After the course ended and work on the site began, it became apparent to us that the new gardeners were not yet confident to manage the garden because they lacked experience. We made an agreement with them that we would stay with the garden for two years and offer practical workshops to build their knowledge and capacity if they made a corresponding committment to learn.

From small core to large garden

The idea was to consolidate a small core area then to progressively move out in small steps, consolidating the construction and planting of each small area before extending onto the surrounding lawn.

Following the design developed during the course and using the colourful plan drawn up by a landscape architectrure student, a small circular garden was initially established mid-field of the site, which at that time consisted of little more than mown lawn.

In appearance, the garden took the form of a patch of mulch and seedlings. It grew, amoeba-like, to colonise the encompassing green lawn.

Organic fill had been brought in to provide good growing conditions for the young citrus, avocado and mango trees and to remediate the alkaline soil. Compost bays had been built and stable sweepings sourced from nearby were in conversion to organic fertiliser.

From the start, the garden was viewed as a Permaculture project and a number of students went on to enrol in our Permaculture Design Course. The UNSW Community Permaculture Garden was at last a reality.

Building, consolidating, expanding

This is how it went during the UNSW Community Permaculture garden’s first years – a time of learning, building and consolidating.

During this period, the community garden increased its visibility among the national Permaculture and community gardening milieu. The numbers of visitors increased, including many from overseas - the USA and PNG for example - and the garden became a site for community workshops in the NSW Envirionmental Protection Agency and local government sponsored Earthworks waste minimisation course. Other training was offered by those involved in the garden. Importantly, the local Randwick community was encouraged to participate in the workshops in order to create the links that the university wanted to develop.

TAFE, Permaculture Design Course, Permaculture introductory course students and the Eastern Suburbs Organbic Gardneing course were now making use of the site for visitation and learning. It was the start of what became a main focus of the garden, as a sustainability education resource.

It was in this role that we raised the idea of the community garden becoming the site of the year 2000 Seed Savers’ Network annual conference, which turned out a successful event.

Mood change

The garden was by now established, the multi-storey food forest growing and the reputation of the community garden spreading around the country.

Then, in 1999, the university served notice that the gardeners were to quit the site, which was to revert to university management, possibly for redevelopment.

Unhappy at the product of their imagination and hard work going to waste, the gardeners rallied support around Australia and even overseas. A save-the-garden campaign was launched and the university vice-chancellor found himself the target off unhappy email and letter writers.

The university agreed to allow use of the land to continue, though it was now without the security of tenure offered by the lease agreement of its early years.

Gardeners take preventative action

To prevent a reoccurrence of this incident, the community gardeners sought to embed the garden into the operations of UNSW. This, they thought, would secure its future as a university asset, one with continued community access.

They did this by developing the idea to turn the adjoining, university-owned house at 12 Arthur Street, used to accommodate a few students, into an energy and water efficient demonstration centre where students and the public could see the practicality of these conservation technologies.

Inspiration for this role had been seeded during the 1995 visit to Australia by ex-NASA astrphysicist-turned-community activist, Dr Robert Gillman, creator of the US-based Context Institute. Gillman spoke to audiences in Sydney and at the Permaculture Convergence in Adelaide. He suggested that sustainable technologies and ideas must be developed and trialed and put on display as working models at demonstration centres so that their practicability and desirability could be seen by visitors. When necessity decreed, he explained, the models would already be in existence and could be easily replicated and scaled as needed.

A grant was obtained from a philanthropic source and a coordinator of the new UNSW Ecoliving Centre hired – Cameron Little.

Little could the gardeners have guessed that the structure they instigated to save the community garden would one day be complicit in its loss.

A garden of many uses

Over the years, the UNSW Permaculture Community Garden has became a site of many uses and a valuable educational asset to Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs.

An asset for the university

• UNSW lecturers ran tours through the garden
• students carried out research projects on site
• students use the site as a quiet location and to sit and read
• the Sydney Waste Board funded a student-led composting research project in the community garden
• the community garden provided direct links between the university and the Randwick community, something alluded to in university corporate documents.

A working asset

• the community garden has served as work site and training venue in horticultural skills for sidsabled people.

An educational asset for Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs

• for some years, the Eastern Suburbs Community College made use of the UNSW Permaculture Community Garden for its organic gardening courses
• Ryde TAFE students visited the garden as part of their training in Permaculture design and horticulture
• local people and their children would visit the garden and the children play there and visit the chickens
• international visitors were shown around the garden.

A local ‘Third Place’ and cultural resource

‘Third Place’ is a term coined by University of West Florida sociology academic, Ray Oldenberg, to describe a venue used by local communities as a place to meet, talk, socialise and form a sense of community. (First place: the home; Second place: the workplace). Information: 19,Oldenberg R; The Great Good Place

• local, non-gardening families visit the community garden for purposes of passive recreation; their children play in the garden and visit the chooks –a rare chance for children to interact with farm animals
• small groups of friends/colleagues meet in the garden
• local people have used the garden for events, such as Halloween celebration for children
• the UNSW Community Permaculture Garden Arts in the Garden team make use of the community garden for performance - acapella singing, readings, festivals, food and more
• local people leave their household and garden green waste for conversion into compost.

A training site for local government and the community

As part of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the University and Randwick City Council, the community garden and Ecoliving Centre has been successfully used by Council for courses and workshops in:

• organic home gardening
• sustainable living (water, energy conservation design; safe household cleaning; materials selection and design for renovating.

Randwick City Council has also made use of the community garden and Ecoliving Centre for:

• a demonstration site for sustainability education showing the value of water conservation through rainwater tanks and greywater treatment
• an example of biologically diverse fruit and vegetable growing
• inspiration for home garden plant selection and design.

Council also funded cultural activities for Randwick residents in the community garden through the Arts in the Garden team:

• community mosaic-making workshops
• production of the large and beautiful 'natural cycles' mosaic made by community members at the 2005 Ecoliving Fair, which now stands prominently at the entrance to the garden.

As part of its MOU, Council:

• ran a successful Ecoliving Fair on-site in 2005, attracting some 3000 local residents to the site
• funded the design and installation, by a Sydney-based Permaculture landscape architect, of an outdoor classroom and durable paths to bring the Ecoliving Centre up to a standard of safety suitable as a public venue
• funded an educational native plant garden in the UNSW Community Permaculture Garden.

The site has been used by a broad range of university and community groups and individuals and has promoted sustainable urban practices.

All to end?

Now, the opportunity to continue the garden’s public and university-oriented uses is to end.

You can read the tale of poor process, poor communication and disregard of community participation in the on this website.

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PAGE UPDATED... Friday, 4 May 2007