For many people, working in the garden by themselves is a small slice of paradise. But others prefer to feed off other gardening enthusiasts — both novices and professional — and a community garden can be the perfect place to do just that.
The Knox Community Gardens in Boronia are all about inclusion, socialising and helping one another out, says president John Di Danna.
The gardens have been open since 1985 and, nearly 30 years on they’re so popular there’s a waiting list for plots. There are 120 plots at the site and 150 people are involved, from older retirees to young women and their children.
Regular social functions and an annual Christmas party ensure the focus isn’t just on gardening but on meeting new people and keeping active. The garden also provides a sanctuary for students with intellectual disabilities who visit the garden weekly to tend their plots.
A retired school principal, Mr Di Danna, says he loves ensuring the children are enjoying their time in the garden. So much so that he’s spent the past few months building a tractor from a broken down ride-on mower for them.
“I couldn’t get it to work, so I’ve put a steering wheel on, and an exhaust. It’s something different for them to have a go with.”
He also spent many long hot days last summer scouring industrial estates for materials to build planter boxes for use while planting. “I collected scraps from industrial areas and then filled them with dirt and manure, and painted them — it means [children] don’t get as dirty and can stand and help.”
But plants need tending to more than once a week, and that’s where Mr Di Danna and his trusty volunteers lend a helping hand. “We like to help out the groups down there. We’ll weed, maintain the plots, plant some new fruit and vegetables during summer holidays.”
Community gardens are also taking off around Dandenong and Noble Park.
Yesterday, Noble Park Community Centre opened the suburb’s first community garden. It has involved teamwork from groups such as the Rotary Club of Noble Park for the plots to become reality.
The club has built planter boxes out of donated apple crates, and created other garden structures. It will also maintain the communal food garden.
“Helping doesn’t cost us anything. It makes us guys feel great,” club president Con Christoforou says. “My idea of Rotary is not just raising money. It’s not about rich businessmen who get together for a drink and have a sausage sizzle — it’s about being hands-on.”
The garden’s designer, Emily Ballantyne-Brodie, says the club “saved the day”. “They were the ones who came and built the garden’s foundations.” Other contributors included Derek Sloetjes of Design Landscape Scenery who donated soil and helped Noble Park Primary School pupils build the garden’s boxes and structures.
Bunnings Sandown donated and installed an irrigation system, plants and spare seeds; the Dandenong Market donated the apple crates; and the City of Greater Dandenong a stunning redwood slab used for a table.
The result is a “quirky beautiful” garden decorated with a mosaic, ornaments and growing fruits of the season, Ms Ballantyne-Brodie says.
Meridian housing estate in Dandenong South is believed to be the site of a national first — communal fruit trees in the streets.
Anne Makhijani, secretary of the Meridian Homeowners Association, says the 90 trees on nature strips and the estate’s orchard would yield stonefruits, apples, pears, citrus, nuts, cherries, guava, avocado, currants and berries.
Herb tubs, which include curry leaves, and the trees, irrigation system, manure and mulch have also been provided by state government developer Places Victoria.
It’s up to the residents to prune and maintain the trees. But Ms Makhijani expects them to be rewarded with an abundance of produce and potential friendship. “We have 17 nationalities of residents and we’re hoping this will help people to build bridges,” she says.
About 60 residents at Chestnut Gardens aged-care village in Doveton have enthusiastically taken up their trowels for a community garden of herbs, vegetables and flowers.
Acting unit manager Louise Buckley hopes it will have therapeutic benefits for residents. “They would have had flower and vegetable gardens in their past lives. It’s a chance for them to reconnect with gardening.”
The Ashwood College Permaculture Food Garden is a little different because, instead of individual plots, a group of dedicated volunteers manage a communal 2000 square metre site.
Lush with all the varieties of lettuce you could name, more than 50 fruit trees bearing apricots, peaches and nectarines, as well as a beehive, pizza oven and pergola, the garden is a flourishing testament to people power.
Mariette Tuohey started the garden more than five years ago because of a passion for sustainability and permaculture. “We only have one planet and we seem to be using it up as fast as possible. We’re not even considering what we’re leaving behind for our grandchildren,” she says.
Despite the focus being on having a place to garden and socialise, Mrs Tuohey says talk inevitably leads to how each person can lower their carbon footprint. “Talk often does revolve around that. We discuss buying produce from farmers’ markets so you know it has come from nearby. There won’t be any asparagus from Venezuela for sale at those markets.”
There are two open sessions at the garden each week — Wednesday and Saturday mornings — but once a person becomes known to organisers they can have access on other days.
Mrs Tuohey says one of the main reasons behind the decision to have a shared community garden is to use chickens to develop the site.
Chookdomes — mobile chicken enclosures that provide a mobile weeding and fertilisation service — will soon arrive at the site. They have a diameter of about four metres and are made of PVC piping and chicken wire with a shadecloth door, a tarp over the top to keep them dry and a bamboo roost for chickens to sleep on.
This roost is suspended more than a metre above the ground, keeping the birds safe from foxes. Each dome has several nesting boxes that were recycled mower catchers.
“If you’ve had any experience with chickens you’ll know that they can be very destructive in a vegetable garden,” Mrs Tuohey says.
“But if you can contain their ‘efforts’ to a specific garden bed, they will weed it and fertilise it effectively with much pleasure and gusto. When the bed’s cleared you move the chooks on and plant out where they’ve been.”
The Ashwood garden received state and federal government funding when it was set up but now relies on money from workshops to keep it going. Mrs Tuohey offers classes on food gardening topics, such as compost and worm farms, and says they’re all “practical hands-on workshops”.
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