Planning and starting your community garden by Russ Grayson + Fiona Campbell

< making a start < challenges < bottom-up approach < let's start planning
< where will we garden? < designing the garden < let's start building
< the management phase < gardening cooking and eating
< your community garden project < useful skills for community garden organisers
< member agreement < full document for printing

LET’S START BUILDING!

You might think that it has taken a lot of effort to get this far are you are right. But believe me – time spent in planning is time well spent. You don’t then have to waste your time correcting the mistakes of bad or non-existent planning!

Now your group has identified its needs, obtained land and designed the community garden. At last, it’s time to start building.

A string knotted at the radius of the garden bed and the width of the path is used to mark out a circular garden and pathway at UNSW Community Permaculture Garden. To make the path, cardboard has been placed on the grass and bricks laid to mark the edges. Bark chips were later used to fill the path. January 1995.

Aesthetics are important

Most community gardeners quickly become expert scroungers. Building materials, old seats and other things are easily recycled in community gardens.

Remember when you’re collecting recyclables that you will get on best with council and neighbours if you store materials tidily and maintain a high level of visual aesthetics. The place should not look like a junkyard.

You know that aesthetics do not affect the productivity of your garden, but the perceptions of neighbours are real considerations in the management of community gardens. Anyway, materials stored tidily are more accessible.

List materials needed

You identified the materials, equipment and resources you will need during the planning stage.

Look for local businesses that might donate some of them. Perhaps council has old park benches at its depot they will let you use. For those you have to buy, consider grants and fundraising events.

Construction tasks

In the construction phase, we carry out a number of tasks:

• garden bed construction
• soil fertility improvement
• pathway construction
• nursery building for plant propagation
• compost making (this can start as soon as you secure access to land)
• propagation of plants for our first planting (this too can start as soon as you secure access to land; the young plants can be looked after in the gardener’s home until they are ready to plant)
• building a storage shed and a shelter for the gardeners to sit under, out of the rain or hot sun.

Shelter

You will quickly find that community gardens are more than spaces where people grow food. They become social gathering places.

This makes the construction of some kind of shelter a task of equal importance to that of building garden beds and planting them out. You will need somewhere to escape the weather, to relax, to brew coffee or tea (maybe herbal teas from the garden).

A weed barrier of newspaper is covered with a layer of mulch. Perennial plants, such as bananas, were planted first and the newspaper placed around them. Macquarie University Community Garden, Sydney.

Paths

Pathways are important. They enable you to move around your garden easily, to get a wheelbarrow where you need to take it and to harvest plants without trampling the garden.

If you succeed in getting a large enough grant, consider paved pathways. These require less maintenance. Those at Melbourne's Fitzroy Community Garden and Sydney's Waterloo Estate gardens are good examples.

Too often, you visit community gardens and see the gardeners getting frustrated with pulling out kikuyu and other invasive grasses from their poorly made paths and their garden beds because of the poorly made garden edges.

Well constructed gardens are low maintenance, low-frustration gardens.

As a safety precaution with children, a barrier of concrete reinforcing mesh has been fastened over a pond in the Waterloo Community Garden at Waterloo Uniting Church, inner-Sydney. An old bathtub has been used for the pond. Food plants such as water chestnut, duck potato and watercress can be grown in garden ponds.

Paths for educational gardens

If your garden is to fulfil an educational role or is part of an educational institution and you expect frequent visits by large numbers of people:

• plan your main access paths wider than usual to accommodate larger numbers
• design gathering places where people can gather around a guide to listen to them
• design sitting circles - circles of bench seats - where visitors can sit to listen to their guide or to participate in workshop activities
• plan a covered workshop/ sitting area protected from sun and rain by a roof and from cold winds by a wall or barrier of some type; ensure that there is a bench or table where people can sit and eat.

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PAGE UPDATED... Tuesday, 15 January 2002