ACFCGN newsletter Summer 2006

COMMUNITY HARVEST

Newsletter of the Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network – building local food culture

SUMMER 2006

Putting down roots

Community Gardening Conference Adelaide, South Australia 6–9 March 2006

Learning in the garden 4–5 March 2006 A seminar for people interested in school food gardens

australian city farms & community gardens network

community harvest

community culture

Editor’s blurb THIS EDITION OF COMMUNITY HARVEST has a double focus — the educational use of food gardens in schools and art in community gardens.

It’s over a decade since interest in the educational use of food gardens got underway in earnest. The difference now is that school gardens are accepted as valid educational tools by teachers, parents, community food advocates and educational authorities. There is a growing number of school gardens Australia-wide.

Thanks have to go to those early, communitybased advocates of school gardens and the enthusiastic teachers that developed curricula material linking the garden to the syllabus. Thanks must also go to two pioneers of the use of food gardens for education — Carolyn Nuttall and Robina McCurdy (see next page).

My first introduction to the art potential of community gardens came through that exuberant practitioner, Mary O’Connell, Local food, local organic produce... jams and seeds produced at Beelerong Community Garden, Brisbane

whose Arts in the Garden team brought music, mosaics, acapella singing and good food to the UNSW Permaculture Garden.

But the prize, were there one (should there be one?), for art in the community garden must go to the extraordinary Veg Out Community Garden in St Kilda. See the photo essay starting page 18.

A good year The Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network’s last meeting was on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. There, we made our first annual Network award for excellence to Ravenswood Community Garden in Launceston, Tasmania — see the stories on page 26 and 27.

Significantly, the conference was followed by a two-day seminar on school food gardens. Like that first one in Brisbane, Cultivating Community’s Edible Schoolyard conference last November attracted a similar number of attendees — more than 200. The March 2006 Network annual conference in Adelaide will see another such seminar — details on our website: www.communitygarden.org.au. It seems that the time has come for the educational use of food gardens in schools. Our website carries more on school gardens — we have set aside a part of the site to report this emerging practice.

The March 2006 annual conference of the Network signifies the entrenchment of community gardening in our cities. Thanks to the CERES SA crew for making the Adelaide conference a reality. ...Russ Grayson, editor

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www.communitygarden.org.au

photos: Russ Grayson www.pacific-edge.info

the WOMEN who STARTED it all

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wo women have been responsible for popularising the idea of creating food gardens in schools and linking them to school curricula.

New Zealander, Robina McCurdy (left) popularised the practice when she offered a three-day workshop at the 1995 national Permaculture Convergence in Adelaide and at subsequent workshops around the country.

Before that, Carolyn Nuttall (above), a retired primary school teacher living in Brisbane, was working with her students in the food garden she instigated at a primary school. Out of that experience came Carolyn’s book, A Children’s Food Forest, which is still in demand. Carolyn has since published a book of artistic work sheets for use in schools.

The use of gardens in schools for teaching skills such as basic horticulture, waste reduction through composting and worm farming as well as curricula subjects like science, arts, languages, biology and others now appears to have come into its own as schools all over the country adopt gardening, food production and, in some cases, the garden-to-kitchen approach where students grow, harvest, preserve or prepare, cook and eat what they grow in a shared class meal.

Enquiries about Carolyn’s books, A Children’s Food Forest and her manual of worksheets, The Food Forest Resource Sheets to c.nuttall.uq.net.au

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Juneen Schulz reports...

gardening our schools

IT TAKES PASSION

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HE YEAR our youngest child started at Foster Primary School in South Gippsland was my introductory to school kitchen gardens.

I wanted to volunteer some of my time towards the school that our two youngest children were attending. I wasn’t interested in the canteen or reading or math — my passion was growing and preparing food. So, with a little courage and lots of enthusiasm I approached the teachers from grades three and four level.

I can still see the look on their faces as they gave me the go-ahead. I’m sure their thoughts were “Oh, no — not another parent with a crazy idea, I wonder how long this will last — give it only a couple of months.”

Little did they know I was in for the long haul, seven years and every Friday — rain, hail or shine.

No dig — what’s that?

A site was located, a small fenced area that once was a garden. It had weeds some metres in height and blackberries rampant in one corner.

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“This will be a challenge,” I thought. “Let’s go no-dig”, I said.

“No dig?,” they responded, “What’s that?”.

How do I act confidently when I really have no idea myself? This was all new to me. I had read Esther Dean’s book on the no-dig method so I guess I felt I knew enough to get me by.

We needed resources and a note went into the school newsletter and students went home and coerced their parents. It didn’t take long before old newspapers, manure, old rice hulls, old hay, seeds and compost were being dumped beside the proposed garden.

The day came to make a start in the garden.

With a class of students and their teacher, it was a hive of activity.

First, the tall grass was trampled down as there was no way of getting a lawn mower into this very rough, overgrown area. The blackberries were cut and removed, then lots of newspaper covered everything like a carpet. Manure, mulch, old rice hulls, autumn

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leaves and compost helped to create the gardens, which were then planted out to veggies. It was a fun time and the garden grew.

Funding by food hamper In the beginning there was no finance to support the garden, so I thought I would organize a food hamper raffle and raise some funds this way... if $100 was raised I would be very pleased as a worm farm and some fruit trees were on the wanted list. But over $500 was collected and I was overjoyed. We had more money to spend. From that time on, the school was able to put away some finance for the continuation of the garden.

Garden to kitchen in the first year That first year, there was lots of broccoli harvested. This was made into creamy broccoli sauce with pasta. It was a great joy to watch children eating vegetables that were created into tasty and fun meals.

For the first few years the growing and harvesting of the kitchen garden continued, with the odd day of preparing and eating the food, Some of the produce was preserved — for example, bottled beetroot — which won first prize at the local show.

During that first year of the kitchen garden, the school won the regional garden awards from the Kevin Heinze School Gardens. The gift voucher from the award encouraged the gardeners to continue to expand. Fruit trees were purchased and planted; grapevines now happily climb up a pergola; and feijoas, strawberry guavas, olives, hazelnuts grow in different areas of the school.

An extremely busy year One full year was dedicated to revegetation of a section of a small but significant creek that flows along the boundary of the school.

A grant was received for the clearing of

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noxious and environmental weeds. The area was then planted with indigenous species.

This was an extremely busy year of weed clearing, collecting of seeds, propagating the seeds, planting the seedlings — all achieved by the school children from the prep to grade six. It was a satisfying time for the students as they were able to learn about environmental issues. Because the school so bravely took the first step in making a difference with some of the environmental issues regarding water ways, this has now encouraged the continuation of the clearing and revegetation of the creek by the broader community. Another award was won.

During the year of 1999 I completed a Permaculture Design Course. The original veggie patch was now displaced as the land no longer belonged to the school, this then gave me the opportunity to design and create a new garden with Permaculture principles. I was disappointment of the loss of the first garden but then found joy in the prospect of a new site.

The new garden Knowing how important the kitchen garden had been for the school, community, the teachers were very keen to create another garden.

A new site was found and a design produced. With the approval from school staff, this new garden commenced in the year 2000. A change is good as a holiday, they say. This was the perfect remodelling for the school kitchen garden.

It took two years to complete by my precious little helpers and myself. Contractors were hired to build a fence around the garden and to serve as espaliered support for the fruit trees. I conned my husband to help build the pond, the very last item to be completed in the garden.

The garden is now fully established with

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espaliered apple trees, nashi, plums, apricot and peach. There are raspberries, currants, more strawberry guavas, seven year beans, asparagus, strawberries, kiwi fruit climbing over an archway, tamarillo, pepino, new zealand yam and, in the pond water, chestnuts and duck potatoes. The garden is almost full of perennial plants and is almost sustainable, if a time should come when there is no-one spending time in the garden.

It doesn’t stop there — more awards were won and more gift vouchers received.

The garden continued to grow, even outside the fenced area. There’s almonds, carob trees, a bush food garden, chillean guavas, artichokes and a mulberry.

My vision was a school garden full of fruiting plants that could be harvested throughout the year. I can picture children wondering around, picking fruit here or a veggie there as they play. This has been accomplished to some extent — from small beginnings, big things grow.

One year when another volunteer could make the time, weekly menus were organized.

It has been lots of fun, something I’ve enjoyed that brings a lot of fond memories.

My real career discovered I’ve moved on from this school, these past two years, and have become involved with 10 other schools in the district.

During the last year — 2003 — when I was at Foster Primary, I had a visit from Tim Howard, who works with the Southern Health Services for South Gippsland. He liked what he saw.

So, with his energy and persistence, he was able to source funding to kick-start 10 schools within the district getting a kitchen garden developed. The schools were found and I travelled to each during the middle of last year to meet with students and staff and to take a look at their grounds.

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It was an inspirational time, talking with the kids. We talked about what they would like in their gardens, what food they enjoyed eating and whether they would have fun helping create the gardens.

Each school had a different need and it was interesting to visit the many different sites. Most of the schools already had their sites chosen, this made the work a lot easier.

With ideas tossed around and input from the students, the schools were ready to make a commitment.

Education days Tim found some more funding to run an educational day, which volunteers and teachers were invited to come along to.

This was well supported by approximately 20 people. The lessons organised were simple and hands on and the attendees all went away with gifts kindly donated by hardware stores. It was a fun day, with the hope that each school would be inspired.

A competition was also organised through a local nursery and some very amazing garden designs and models were made by the children. Prizes were given to each of the schools that participated.

A further education day was organised for this past autumn to inspire schools with the idea that gardening doesn’t stop because it’s winter. A lecturer from the TAFE College came to encourage schools to think about planting fruit trees in the school grounds.

There was much to learn from these educational days — there were ladies who taught mosaics and basket weaving — all these great art works that can be incorporated into the garden.

I believe most schools would have benefited from the educational days, but then to return to their schools and put this into practise can sometimes take a lot more energy than they had.

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Practice the focus Both Tim and I have now identified that a day spent in the garden getting our hands dirty with staff and students from the individual schools seems to be the next step.

This has been put into practise in recent weeks with one of the schools. It worked wonders.

There was lots of path-building with bricks, lots of newspaper placed on the existing soil and lucerne hay and mushroom compost to create the garden plots. Seedlings and seeds were planted and watered with much enthusiasm. A fun day was had by all.

One little boy was so determined to stay in the garden because he had such a great time that he wasn’t prepared to go back to class.

The reports we have heard from this school is all positive, they just needed a little help to get started.

This may be the answer to some of the schools who struggle to find reliable enthusiastic

volunteers. There are other schools who are plugging away nicely — they have very supportive parent help. This seems to be the solution.

Encouraging volunteers How do we encourage volunteers to support such a great program?

The benefits to the students is unimaginable.

The stories shared in the garden are treasured. The knowledge they learn from the garden is forever.

When she listened to their stories from the garden, the principle from Foster Primary School was blown away by the knowledge the children had gained. The fun they had when sharing food or trying new food was always pleasurable to see.

I would like to think that every child has the same opportunity to be part of a kitchen garden where they can grow, care, harvest and eat their own food.

Growing Communities in Brisbane

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magine having an organization that helps you plan your school or community garden, gathers the resources and contacts that will make it happen and organises training.

Well, we’ve arrived! Linda McKee and Giulliano Perez have been assisting two schools in Brisbane. With Queensland Department of Health funding they helped Grovely and Zillmere state primary schools set up school community gardens.

With Dr Shawn Somerset from Griffith University, we researched whether gardens in schools can improve the nutrition of students and others. We have come up with a strategy to develop a separate organization — Growing Communities — that will eventually hive off and respond to these requests: nnorthey@bigpond.net.au

Enquiries about setting up school gardens in Melbourne: bradshone@yahoo.com.au Enquiries for Carolyn Nuttall’s A Children’s Food Forest and The Food Forest Resource Sheets contact author at c.nuttall@uq.net.au

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Subscribe to the school garden email discussion group... send a blank e-mail to http://au.groups.yahoo.com/groups/school_gardens/ and follow the directions.

Snake sculpture — Zillmere primary garden

John Morahan

www.communitygarden.org.au

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Olympic Park primary, Melbourne

Connecting school communities

gardening our schools

to sustainable agriculture

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UST AS THERE IS A HEALTHY AND THRIVING COMMUNITY GARDEN MOVEMENT, school food gardening is continuing to ‘grow’ and is an active and alive component of many schools across Australia.

Jenny Pettenon reports

Gardens in the school grounds or the local community are exciting learning environments for children and provide an amazing exploratory space to connect with the earth, nature and where their food comes from. School gardens, whether vegetable, indigenous or wetland, can provide opportunities for learning experiences focussed on food and farming, where food comes from, sustainable production of food, environmental management, and the connection each of us has with the land.

Gardens and a sheep called Rhubarb With a thriving school garden, Antonio Park Primary School in Mitcham, Victoria, is one such school. Together with the productive food garden, expanding orchard, a sheep called Rhubarb, well-fed worms and a scattering of chickens the school has an invaluable and well utilised learning environment.

During Term Three the school hosted a special fruit tree pruning session for the school community. Organised by the Victorian education program — LandLearn (information below), the

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afternoon featured expert staff from the University of Melbourne, Faculty of Land and Food. Parents, students and other members of the school community gathered in the orchard to learn the ‘ins and outs’ of apical dominance, vase shaped trees and opening the canopy to maximise light penetration.

With an opportunity to undertake some hands-on learning the students, teachers and parents were soon confident about which branches to remove and buds to retain. The afternoon was met with such enthusiasm the event is tipped to become an annual one.

Partnerships such as this, along with community involvement are integral in both maintaining and making the most of learning opportunities and environments such as school gardens. Without the tireless work of parents, teachers and community volunteers (as in community gardens) the resource may deteriorate or disappear altogether.

Industries and focuses on encouraging and supporting teachers to incorporate sustainable agriculture material into the curriculum.

School gardens fit the sustainable agriculture theme well and LandLearn can support interested teachers with innovative and curriculum-aligned activities that engage the students and brings the classroom into the garden. The growing enthusiasm and passion for school gardens is an exciting opportunity for LandLearn to engage with schools and encourage students to make the connection between growing their own food and the importance of sustainable agriculture to their lives.

If the number of queries from passionate and enthusiastic teachers received by the team is anything to go by, then school gardening holds a strong and vital place in our children’s future education and learning experiences.

In Victoria, staff from the LandLearn program are excited about the growing enthusiasm and passion expressed for the value of school gardens by teachers and school communities.

Most Australian states have similar education programs, which can provide support to school communities and teachers in maximising the learning experience in the garden and in integrating school gardens into the curriculum.

LandLearn is a Victorian Education program funded by the Department of Primary

For further information contact: Jenny.Pettenon@dpi.vic.gov.au http://landlearn.netc.net.au

A resource kit

for South Australian community gardeners everything you need to know about running a community garden... from designing and developing your garden to maintaining and promoting it access online: www.canh.asn.au/community_gardening printed copy — $5 + $5 postage: CAHN: 08 8371 4622 info@canh.asn.au

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gardening our schools

the EDIBLE CLASSROOMS conference

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HE USE OF FOOD GARDENS in education has come of age. What started as a special interest within the Permaculture milieu ten years ago is now mainstream. So much was evident at the November 2005 Edible Classroom conference at Collingwood College, Melbourne.

More than 200 participants heard speakers such as author and chef, Staphanie Alexander, Cultivating Community’s (a community organisation funded by the state government to assist housing estate gardeners) Ben Neil and Victorian community garden instigator, Basil Natoli, as well as school students and teachers present their ideas on the development of food gardens as educational venues. From interstate came Jacqui Hunter (Hunter Gatherer Designs, Adelaide), claire fulton (community gardens network, Adelaide), Leonie Shanahan (community gardens, Noosa),

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Students at a Western Australian school fold back the cover to check a large worm farm. The worms convert organic wastes such as garden and food scraps into ‘vermicompost’ which is used as fertiliser.

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Rebecca Chattelburgh (community and home garden educator, Albury) and Fiona Campbell (local government sustainability educator, Sydney) and others.

Participants visited three school gardens in Melbourne plus the inspirational garden at Collingwood College, which was started

by Stephanie Alexander and Cultivating Community.

A number of the gardens are the basis of programs in which students grow, prepare and cook the food grown in their gardens then eat it as a shared meal. From out of their own funds, some schools support a community garden coordinator to work with students.

Gardens range in size and in the amount of time students spend in them. Some schools keep chooks in their gardens as an added interest for the children. What became clear was the eagerness of students to work in the gardens.

Jude Fanton, from the Seed Savers Network in Byron Bay, held workshops in teaching seed saving and seed processing in schools.

Carolyn Nuttall, author of A Children’s Food Forest, provided an informal and insprirational address.

As a follow-on to a convivial Sunday afternoon picnic in the Melbourne Botanic Gardens organised by Jude Fanton, a visit to the garden’s Ian Potter Children’s Garden was made possible by Roslyn Semler from Visitor Services. The playground features plantings and installations that provide unstructured playspace in which the children are free to use their imagination. There is a large food garden — herbs, vegetables and a few fruit trees — planted in raised beds.

Come of age For a few that stayed on, the Edible Classroom conference segued into an informal community gardens tour. This should come as no surprise as the Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network enjoys a close alliance with those working in school gardens.

The Edible Classrooms conference was organised by Cultivating Community, an organisation involved in starting school as well as community gardens. It is through events such as this that a skilled and knowledgable cadre of practitioners is emerging to develop what is a new avenue of learning in our schools.

Report by Russ Grayson info@pacific-edge.info

Read more about community gardening in the ABC’s...

Organic Gardener magazine Australia’s authoritative journal of organic living now includes community gardening.

Subscriptions: 02 8444 4490 ...or from your newsagent. www.communitygarden.org.au

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gardening our schools

Garden to kitchen a photo essay of educational food gardens in schools images by Russ Grayson www.pacific-edge.info

Growing and harvesting, preserving or preparing, cooking... it’s a natural progression and one practiced by more and more innovative schools around the country. Call it life education. These photographs provide just a glimpse into the blending of education and food gardens.

Spensley Street primary...

The winding path of a vegetable and herb garden follows the fence.

Seating is simple planks. The stones that make up the edge of the garden are anchored in concrete for durability.

The free-flowing design is visually pleasing and children may find such gardens more intriguing than simple rectangular or square shapes.

The garden improves on an uninteresting blank wall.

Spensor Street primary...

The vegetable and herb garden at Spensor Street primary in Melbourne includes a greenhouse, herb spiral and pond (the stone-edged circle in the lower foreground).

The garden continues beyond the fenced area (above).

The design of school gardens is critical to their success. Paths must be sturdy and wide enough to accommodate the children working in the garden.

The importance of signage in educational gardens...

Students at Katoomba primary (Blue Mountains, NSW) display a sign showing the components of a compost system. Making and monitoring the compost provides practical studies in science, biology and environmental subjects as well as teaching a valuable skill.

The enclosed, commerciallyavailable type of compost bin reduces the incidence of rodents and can be managed as a turned, rapid compost or as a slow system.

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School garden, WA...

A garden of wide paths, a large worm farm and large pond in a West Australian school.

Geotextile has been used to cover the soil around the pond. Garden edges of concrete blocks provide durability, as do the gravel paths which also reduce weed invasion and maintenance. Gardens are mulched to reduce water loss and provide nutrients to the plants as the mulch breaks down.

Collingwood College...

Scene of the garden-to-kitchen project led by chef and author, Stephanie Alexander, and supported

by Victoria’s Cultivating Community, Collingwood College garden is part of an integrated program of skills development.

Students grow vegetables, herbs and fruit, harvest and process the food, cook it in the school kitchen and enjoy a shared, nutritious meal of fresh, local food.

Lewisham primary...

During the 1990s, community educators used the Sydney inner western school’s vegetable garden as the focus for education in worm farming, composting and gardening skills.

Fiona Campbell holds a worm poster while Angus Campbell (no relation) introduces the children to worm biology. Doug Bailey (left), trained in anthropology and with a keen interest (and garden that demonstrates) ethnobotany, looks on.

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claire fulton reports from adelaide

art in commmunity gardens

Embracing a r t in S A

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OMMUNITY GARDENS have taken root all over Australia in the past decade. They’re places where people come together to grow food and grow community.

In community gardens, people learn, grow and actively create, so it’s not surprising that many community gardens have begun to embrace art projects as a way to involve people and celebrate the connections between gardens and people.

Community gardens seem to attract and inspire artworks of one kind or another. Garden gnomes are often the first to appear.

They’re closely followed by wind-catching assemblages of sea shells and shrines of reclaimed urban flotsam. The installations that accumulate are unique, sometimes trashy but always meaningful.

I recall one plot I visited in a Melbourne community garden which had red carpeting, fading framed photographs and ceramic terriers guarding its bumper crop of tomatoes.

There are more than 30 community gardens in South Australia. I decided to visit three to see how they have integrated more formal participatory community art projects.

Beneath the persimmon Fern Avenue Community Garden in Adelaide’s inner-southern suburbs is a hub of conviviality and productivity. Beneath an ancient overarching persimmon tree — abundant with rosy fruit in the autumn — gardeners tend individual plots brimming with vegetables, herbs and leafy greens.

In their communal garden area, the gardeners have planted a

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small orchard to demonstrate ways to grow fruit trees, even in the smallest urban spaces.

There are examples of espaliered fruit trees and of grafting multiple varieties onto one rootstock and experiments with planting several different trees in the same hole so that they naturally dwarf each other.

In 1999, a strawbale community house was built in a series of workshops to house the many workshops and events that the garden hosts and as a place for gardeners to gather to drink tea at the end of the day’s work.

The building features rainwater harvesting and one of Adelaide’s first dry composting toilets.

It also provided an opportunity for Fern Avenue’s first adventure in community art.

The gardeners invited people from the nearby Julia Farr Centre, which provides services to those with brain injury and other disability, to help add the finishing touches to the new building.

Alan Shephard, the Julia Farr artist-inresidence at the time, after months of “trawling through tile shops seeking donations of materials,” as he says, facilitated the design and construction of a mosaic panel on the house’s inside wall.

It was a local resident, who regularly walked past the site, who recognised the next opportunity to integrate artwork into the garden.

Fern Avenue Community Garden’s strawbale building has rainwater harvesting and Adelaide’s first dry composting toilet

www.communitygarden.org.au

“She thought... this is a lovely garden here but with no signage to let people know about it... it’s a wasted resource”, said Alan.

The experience of making the first mosaic piece had been such a positive one — with a whole community of people introduced to the garden — that the gardeners and the disability centre decided to team up again.

The mural took nine months to make. Julia Farr residents spent a session or two a week working on it.

“It was very slow”, said Alan. “We were working with people with major disabilities, perhaps with the use of just one finger.

Sometimes I would spend a whole session working one-to-one just to break a few tiles”.

Their hard worked paid off. Now, visitors and passers-by are welcomed into the garden with a sign that not only identifies it as a community garden but recognises its history as part of one of Adelaide’s original orchards and the site of the Fullarton Jam Factory (1857-1920).

Despite the intensity of the labour, Alan said he found the project very satisfying.

“Community gardening and community arts are closely linked,” he said. “Not so much in terms of their end-product but by a process of participation. Art projects give people a feeling of ownership and give the garden Recognising history at Fern Avenue Community Garden

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The mosaic spiral at Kurruru Pingyarendi Community Garden has symbolic meaning

an individual identity, putting the unique character of the people involved into the garden”.

On the cross paths Kurruru Pingyarendi Community Garden in Adelaide’s north-eastern suburbs is situated at the cross paths of a community health centre, child care centre and Aboriginal neighbourhood house. The garden includes an indigenous bush tucker trail, fruit trees, vegetable beds, a herb wheel and a sensory garden.

Gardeners wanted to create artworks in the garden to reflect themes of harmony, cultural diversity and connection. Workshops, community gatherings and celebrations are important to Kurruru Pingyarendi, so the gardeners also wanted to preserve a large open space. They decided to create a huge, two-dimensional mosaic spiral which Julie Coulls, a health worker at Gilles Plains Community Health Service and co-ordinator of the garden, says reflects what the garden is about.

“The spiral shape is about reflection, looking at things from a different direction, harmony and all the things that spirals and circles represent to different peoples,” she said.

Kurruru Pingyarendi means ‘turning circle’ in Kaurna, the language of the local Aboriginal people. The name was chosen to capture people’s desire for ‘turning towards justice, community and connection’. It refers to a discovery made when digging on the site.

“They came across a circle of river stones,”

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Sculptured seats and pizza oven at Duck Flats Community Garden

said Julie. “With a bit of investigation, it turned out that the stones were part of a turning circle for horse-drawn carts when the site land was a farm run by the first white settler, a Mr Suddholtz”.

The stones were kept and have now become part of turning circle.

The project was a truly participatory one, with many community members involved.

The garden works closely with the adjoining school, child care centre and community assistance project, which were all involved with the artwork. Other community members came along for the art project and have since become involved in the garden.

The project was facilitated by landscape designer and Kaurna cultural advisor, Paul Herzich, and it became a “process of learning about culture and protocols”. The spiral contains images and the Kaurna names of the birds, animals, plants and insects that were there before colonisation. The garden evolved from a reconciliation group and this is still a strong focus. “There was strong feeling that words needed to be in the local language,” says Julie.

The spiral is just stage one of a larger plan for the mosaic pathway to snake its way through the whole garden, turning into textural sawdust and gravel in the sensory garden and emerging from the ground, in places, to form sculptural sitting places.

Making and sharing art Located in the grounds of My Barker Hospital and Community Health Centre in the

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A sculpture of garden gloves signifyies the many people involved in Duck Flats Community Garden

Mosaics are popular in community gardens and can be made as participatory artworks.

Adelaide Hills, Duck Flat Community Garden is a peaceful haven for patients, visitors and local residents alike.

Irene Pierce, Evette Sunset, Julie Montgomery and Tis Milner-Nichols can be discovered throughout the lush gardens, providing an invitation to look anew at familiar garden views.

“The garden has become more of a community development project than I ever imagined,” said Chris Banks, a physiotherapist and the initiator of the garden. “It has been all-consuming, vary satisfying and at times frustrating. The garden has enormous potential to involve community members — people wanting to learn about gardening, to meet others, overcome their disabilities, eat healthy food or just enjoy the ambiance”.

Duck Flat has taken to heart the idea of community gardens as places for making and sharing art. “For those who are not so keen on gardening, we have art projects,” said Chris.

Projects have included the hosting of German ecological sculptor, Johannes Matheison, and his team of students which carved a large ‘healing stone’ that depicts the four seasons and the lifecycle of plants through flower, seed, leaf and fruit.

“We also have two dragon seats, built under the direction of one of our volunteers and made from bricks and rubble. A visual arts student has created a very beautiful meeting area with pizza oven and barbecue.”

Recently, Duck Flat gardeners invited eleven local artists to install site-specific works, creating an exhibition called ‘Life Cycle’.

Works by Rosemary Toogood, Marcel BoothRemmers, Devashoan Temple, Joanne Freebairn, Lawrie Toogood, Peter Surguy,

www.communitygarden.org.au

Julie Montgomery’s first impression of the garden was of a “place of nature, a healing place”. She constructed a series of nests — some big enough for a person to nestle down in — from natural materials including human hair dreadlocks which she made from the sweepings of a hairdresser’s floor.

The nest shapes echo the gentle ridge surrounding the garden, emphasising its enclosing embrace.

Another of the artists drew attention to the many hands involved in growing this garden, assembling a wonderful collection of weathered gardening gloves.

Local community artist and gardener, Hannah Moloney, summed up the prospects for bringing together community-based art practice and community gardening.

“When I look out my window I see the most amazing living, breathing art exhibition — lettuces, onions, beans, callendulas and herbs, all striking their best pose for the viewers.

“Combine that with some human interaction, colourful flags, mosaics or water features and you’ll soon realise that the best art galleries are community gardens”. claire fulton is South Australian contact for the Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network

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Russ Grayson and Carolyn Nuttall visited an amazing community garden in Melbourne. This is Russ’ account...

art in commmunity gardens

D

OWN ST KILDA WAY, there’s a visually amazing and horticulturally productive community garden that goes by the name of Veg Out.

It’s not hard to find. You get off the St Kilda tram where it terminates in Ackland Street, then walk back a short distance to Luna Park. Veg Out is only a block down the side street.

An artists garden Veg Out is a garden started by artists — and it shows. With its eclectic collection of junk — sorry ‘found objects’ (as I was once sternly

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corrected by a junk artist) — you find a garden of masks, mirrored cats, things that spin in the wind, things that clank and clunk in the wind and things that flap in the wind coming off Port Phillip Bay. You also find sculpture, artistic signs, recycled bric-a-brac and even a sculpture of defunct mobile phones that dangle in the wind.

There are plants in the middle of all of this swaying, moving, artistic stuff. Vegetables, herbs, a patch of lawn for children (and a sand pit with pergola over) and a little food forest quaintly but accurately named “fruits of the forest” that conceals a couple secluded seats.

www.communitygarden.org.au

The garden has been thoughtfully designed.

From the gate in the surrounding chainlink fence, a wide, paved path takes the visitor around the perimeter of the planting area, past the Fruits of the Forest and back to the gate where they started, providing a full overview of the garden.

Originally a bowling club, the terrain of this allotment garden is, of course, perfectly flat.

A structure along one boundary is rented as workshops to artists while a long, open sided structure along another border serves as kitchen, eating and socialising area and houses the washrooms.

The local water supply authority has assisted the gardeners by providing a large rainwater tank and other water conservation measures. continued page 21

g

IMAGES...

Previous page: Gardens-in-schools adviser and author, Carolyn Nuttall, passes allotments as she walks the main path through Veg Out Community Garden.

www.communitygarden.org.au

Above: Artworks are scattered all over Veg Out. Below: Beyond allotments brimming with vegetables are the artists’ studios (right) and the community building and kitchen (left). The letter boxes carry the number of individual garden plots. Improvised art works decorate the allotments.

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Above: The Veg Out kitchen includes a pizza oven, a long dining table and notice board. Facilities for cooking and sharing meals are a boon to community gardens — sharing food is a time-honoured means of making and consolidating friendships. Having the equipment to cook and share meals in a community garden encourages a sense of belonging and place.

Below: Community gardeners are encouraged to chop their green waste into smaller pieces so that it composts faster.

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www.communitygarden.org.au

Every month, there is a farmers’ market in the adjoining park.

No boring garden this one — colour is everywhere, from the blue and white chook house (with its galvanised iron sculpture of a cow) to the multi-coloured houses for rabbits, guinea pigs and who knows what else.

Convivial living There are two installations that will be of interest for the food aficionados among us.

First is the mini-vinyard of sauvignon blanc semmillon (community gardeners attending the Sydney pre-Christmas gathering at Fairlight Beach consumed the bottle I brought back). Now in its third vintage, the grapes are processed by a helpful Yarra Valley vigneron who provided help and training to the gardeners so they could manage the grapes.

Above: Ninety-three she might be, and the oldest of Veg Out’s community gardeners, but she’s active and agile and tends the little plot against the Water Wall.

Second is the recently-built and very large pizza oven, the products of which is consumed by gardeners at social evenings at the long dining table.

Veg Out is a productive, artistic, convivial and exuberant community garden. ..........................................................................

Above: A chicken house among the vegetable allotments houses a small, mixed flock. Guinea pigs and rabbits are other livestock kept by the gardeners.

Right: Veg Out’s community vinyard is a unique planting for a community garden.

The grapes, sauvignon blanc semillion variety, are made into wine by a friendly Yarra Valley vigneron. The wine is sold to raise funds for the garden.

www.communitygarden.org.au

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community food systems Vanessa John reports on the Illawarra’s new food forum Vanessa is a local government sustainability educator and supporter of community gardens.

She describes the aims of Food Fairness Illawarra and outlines actions councils might take to support access to food, improved nutrition and local initiative.

the illawarra gets its own

FOOD FAIRNESS alliance (FFI) is a new alliance dedicated to working for food security and food justice in our area — the NSW South Coast.

Kitchen) and Lynne Saville (Hawkesbury Food Project). The forum was followed on 25 October by meeting to establish working parties based on five themes:

FFI consists of representatives from Wollongong City Council, Healthy Cities Illawarra, University of Wollongong, Wesley Mission, Illawarra Area Health Service, the neighbourhood centres and Illawarra Forum as well as permaculturalists and community members. The organisation was founded following the establishment of the Sydney Food Fairness Alliance.

• funding

The inaugural Illawarra Food Forum on 18 October 2006 attracted over 60 people to hear Reverend Bill Crews (Exodus Foundation), Debbie Kirkwood (Warrawong Community

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• networking and partnerships • directory and mapping • education • policy and advocacy • food access and food provision.

First action Our first action was to make a submission for a Healthy Local Government Grant to support a coordinator to facilitate the network and conduct the research and networking to establish the directory.

www.communitygarden.org.au

We have plans to apply for Area Assistance Scheme funding in 2006.

Food and sustainability Prime concerns of the group include: access to nutritious, affordable food for all local people; access to and promotion of regional produce; sustainable food production; community food systems; sustainable land use; forming partnerships to sustain and expand existing food services; community education; and integrated food policy.

Wollongong, the major city of the Illawarra and a centre of heavy industry, has a significant number of marginalised people suffering from food insecurity. At the same time, there is considerable expertise and enthusiasm for community food systems and a number of existing food services.

Food important to sustainability Food embodies sustainability in its essence — it is increasingly recognised as one of the most significant platforms for sustainability education. Community gardens, edible schoolyards, and horticultural therapy are just some examples.

Food is at the intersection of every major social and environmental issue: health, obesity, planning, environment, conservation, climate (long-distance transport and trade in food is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions globally), biodiversity — we have lost 75% of edible plants since the turn of the century — and more.

www.communitygarden.org.au

Nutritionists warn that one of the most significant threats to human health is the collapse of the ecosystems which support food production at the same time that ecologists warn that the most significant threat to global ecosystems is agriculture.

Interdisciplinary approaches are essential to successful action for sustainability. FFI offers the opportunity to show leadership on an essential and innovative issue by working in partnership.

What council can do Wollongong Council can play a significant role in supporting sustainable and socially just food systems and policies. Landuse planning, support for local food systems, promoting regional produce by facilitating links between producers and consumers, integrating food into sustainability education, providing support for local producers, supporting healthier communities and providing training in food production are all potential local government actions.

Council’s Environment and Community Services are keen to work together to explore and support links on this issue.

If successful, the Healthy Local Government funds could support FFI to engage a project officer to create a directory of local community food, build networks, design food education programs (nutrition, food growing, eco-shopping, cooking, community gardening etc), promote regional produce and make recommendations for future council support of food security.

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in the news

now, the good news...

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PIGFACE POINT saved

HEN SOUTH-WESTERN SYDNEY’S Liverpool Council threatened to block access to Dr Ted Trainer’s environmental education site at Pigface Point, it looked as though the site would have to close.

Ted is a UNSW academic, advocate of the limits-to-growth scenario and a published critic of turbo-consumerism and its deleterious effects on the Earth and societies.

To save the site, supporters lobbied council with the result that the site will continue to provide its valuable service.

Ted’s message below was sent when the decision of Liverpool Council was made.

Liverpool Council has agreed to enable us to access our block across the land it owns to our Western border. This is what we had requested.

The outcome has come as an enormous relief from a very worrying year or so during which it seemed there would be no satisfactory solution and the educational venture would have to cease.

As we anticipated, it now seems clear that the Council’s willingness to work out a solution has depended greatly on its understanding of the social value of our educational project, and that understanding has been largely formed by the letters of support sent to the Council. So we are hugely grateful to people who wrote in asking the Council to make sure that Pigface Point could continue.

We are hoping to crank up our activities in the near future, hopefully taking on a coordinator and organising panels of tour leaders who can take groups through. We are a long way from the kind of operation we have been slowly working towards for some 25 years now, but we are sure the venture could in time become a very effective contributor to the revolution. Whatever it eventually becomes could not have been achieved without the help that supporters gave in 2005.

So, many thanks. ...Ted Trainer

Ted Trainer with a solar reflector cooker, one of the many solar and other technologies demonstrated at Pigface Point.

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www.communitygarden.org.au

in the news

community gardening REDUCES CRIME study shows C OMMUNITY GARDENS play a significant role in reducing the incidence of crime on public housing estates in NSW, according to a UNSW study.

The study was conducted over two and a half years on nine public housing estates. It found that a social approach to crime reduction including better design, lighting, on-site housing managers, friendly neighbourhood police and cooperation between government and residents — and the presence of community gardens — was effective in reducing crime. The study is the work of Dr Bruce Judd and Dr Rob Samuels of the AHURI UNSW-UWS Research Centre.

“In many public housing estates, people’s territories are not defined,” Dr Judd said.

“There is no patch that’s yours to look after. You get these no-man’s-land spaces that end up being littered with shopping trolleys, rubbish and dead cars. This causes a downward spiral of physical deterioration, low morale and stigmatisation. In areas of high disadvantage, community becomes critical,” Dr Judd said. “You need empathetic people on the ground actively tackling the issues.”

Community gardens are a way to reclaim ambiguous space, he said. “Occupy space, secure it, light it well and get people actively using it,” is Dr Judd’s prescription for reclaiming urban no-man’s land.

The NSW government housing estate at Claymore, near Campbelltown, provides an example of the role of community gardens in public housing estate rehabilitation. There, assisted by Argyle Community Housing, residents cleaned up their streets, started their own neighbourhood watch, employment service and extensive community food gardens. The prevalence of a large number of Pacific Islander residents had made the large area of community garden reminiscent of a Pacific Island bush garden, with sugar cane, taro, sweet potato, banana and a range of vegetables.

The NSW Department of Housing and the University of New South Wales have published a book and CD based on the results of a fouryear study of the gardens at the Waterloo Public Housing Estate — A Bountiful Harvest: Community Gardens and Neighbourhood Renewal in Waterloo (dowload pdf from NSW Department of Housing website).

Promoting local food...

Local, Sydney-grown food might get its own logo if Upper House MP, Ian Cohen (Greens) has his way.

The logo (left) would appear on food produced in the Sydney region.

Cohen has raised questions about the loss of urban-fringe agricultural land to urban development.

www.communitygarden.org.au

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australian city farms & community gardens network

inaugural award

well deserved

Report on the Australian Community Garden Award presentation, 21 July, 2005

W

hen I arrived at Ravenswood Community Garden in Launceston, Tasmania, to present the Australian Community Garden Award for Excellence I was shown around a fantastic site by two boys who are part of the ‘work away’ program for kids who have trouble at school. The program gives them a chance to do some gardenrelated activities and interact with Work for the Dolers, who are also on site.

They happily showed me through the 100 beds of celery, salad and other delights, propagation sheds, scarecrows, tool sheds, greenhouse and even old shoes and boots in which they had tried to grow flowers (it failed dismally, but I think we all need to celebrate our failures as well as our successes).

I was then treated to lunch at the Cool Cats Café, which is run by the students. They make a mean toasted sandwich and their cakes are worth making the trip from Melbourne for.

After lunch was the ceremony. Tamara and her team had done a great job getting staff and volunteers as well as representatives from funding bodies, Housing Tasmania, the local federal member, the mayor’s office, Department of Education, The Advertiser and Channel 9. They were given the guided tour by a bus load of kids from a local school.

The Award was well received and it was great

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to see people who had put in an amazing effort feeling valued and get a hearty round of applause.

There were many highlights of the day but the one that brought the biggest smile to my face was as the lady from the Department of Education who, when leaving, said “We must catch up next week and sort out this funding thing so that there is no more uncertainty around this wonderful project.”

After everybody left we did a quick interview on ABC radio.

Well done to all that attended the Australian City Farms & Community Garden Network 2005 gathering in Coolum and supported Michael Martin’s idea for an award. We have already made a significant difference to a project.

Go the National Network!!!!

Ben Neil, Cultivating Community, Melbourne ben@cultivatingcommunity.org.au

www.communitygarden.org.au

australian city farms & community gardens network

not picture-perfect

but making a difference

Creativity and a generosity of spirit is to be found in community food gardens, said Tamara Johnston on accepting the inaugural Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network Award for Excellence

O

n behalf of the students, participants, volunteers, staff and committee of the Ravenswood Community Garden, a huge thank you for the inaugural Community Garden Excellence Award.

Following the spirit of the 2005 national gathering for this to be an advocacy tool, and recognizing the importance of a helping hand from a source outside your area to give a needed boost, the Award has been a huge success already.

For me, personally, the Award took on a real sense of purpose when I saw the faces of the students and volunteers when they realised that their efforts in the garden did make a difference — not only for the garden but to themselves as well.

Our Waverley students were tour guides for the day — students that the system has identified as troublesome or not achieving from grades three to six — and all of our visitors were so impressed with their confidence, knowledge and obvious pride in what they do here in the garden.

A vote of appreciation goes to Ben for travelling down and talking to the necessary people. Sue, our teacher, has already organised a meeting with the Education Department human resources manager to see what can be achieved in the short term -— a small but pleasing outcome.

Ravenswood Community Garden is not

www.communitygarden.org.au

picture perfect or totally a wonderful example of a permacultural environment, not even of best garden practices — but we are making a difference for people that are not supported anywhere else.

We are sowing the seeds of change and of a future for groups that struggle to show that they can make change happen and that there is a future. We grow not because we are organic or environmentally friendly — these make the journey more meaningful but are not the reason why we make the journey.

We grow because we value all who come into the garden — like ripples in a pond each is interconnected. We validate people’s life experiences — for, once validated, people can then make changes to their lives. We believe that everyone can succeed — and understand that success for each person is very different. We work tirelessly to develop pathways for reconnecting people to their communities. We allow the garden to have successes and failures — often it is our failures that produce the most powerful results.

I am amazed at the level of creativity and generosity of spirit that emanates from community gardens and also the way that each garden develops their soul or identity for their people or the issues that are important to their community.

Tamara Johnston, Coordinator, Ravenswood Community Garden, Launceaton, Tasmania. ravcomgarden@yahoo.com.au

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REGIONAL CONTACTS...

ACT Geoff Bliss/ SE coast NSW P: 02 4441 6001 wengeoff@hotmail.com

NSW Russ Grayson, Fiona Campbell info@pacific-edge.info Sydney southside, Michael Neville mneville@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au

Hunter region: Rob Henderson Rob.Henderson@cma.nsw.gov.au

Albury-Wodonga: Rebecca Chettleburgh rlchettleburgh@aol.com

TASMANIA Miriam Hetzfield eatwell@cancertas.org.au

QUEENSLAND Morag Gamble Lot 50 Crystal SEEDinternational.com.au Northey Street City Farm nnorthey@bigpond.net.au

SOUTH AUSTRALIA claire fulton, Adelaide spiral@senet.com.au

VICTORIA

Putting down roots

2006 Community Gardening Conference

Ben Neil, Cultivating Community ben@cultivatingcommunity.org.au

WESTERN AUSTRALIA Rosanne & Thom Scott managers@cityfarmperth.org.au

3rd Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network National Conference

Adelaide, South Australia March 6–9 2006 www.communitygarden.org.au ceres.sa@gmail.com (08) 8411 4893

Thanks to the contributors who made this newsletter possible.

Articles and photographs copyright to authors/ photographers.

Authors, editor and publisher accept no responsibility for consequences of application of information in Community Harvest.

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FIND info...

Community gardens directory: Australian Community Foods www.communityfoods.org.au

Farmers markets: www.farmersmarkets.org.au www.ofa.org.au

Seed Savers Network: www.seedsavers.net

www.communitygarden.org.au