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#171 Milson Community Garden

Carole Baker, Gordon Howlett and friends had the fabulous idea to create a community garden in Milson Park, Kirribilli.

After convincing North Sydney Council, they got the go-ahead and a committee was formed to manage and coordinate the build and maintenance of the garden: Chair (Gordon Howlett), Operations Coordinator (Carole Baker), Construction Coordinator (Denny Linker) and a Council Representative (Streets Alive Coordinator, Ralph Forinash).
More details about how it came about here (pdf - 284 kb).

UPDATE - Fri 6th Nov 2009
More details about the garden from Carole:

We work as a co-operative and we do not have allotments. Our garden is organic and we recycle food waste using the Japanese Bokashi system which we are turning into compost once it is fermented.

The garden design, based on research, is a medieval one which allows wheelchair access to 50% of the garden area. The raised beds help everyone be involved as they are 600mm in height and so you can be seated or a small child can - and still have easy reach. A North Sydney Council grant has given support. The timber beds were designed and constructed by local community members. The timber was sourced within Australia and is sustainable Australian native hardwood. (We wished to give an Australian mill the business rather than buying cheaper but unsustainable imported wood.)

A small committee of local community members chose the first planting plan and other community members raised the plants from seed sourced from Diggers Seeds in Victoria. To cut down on transplant shock, most seeds were sown in coir pellets. This has proved a great success. Children under five planted the potato beds but they are really, really interested in the heritage strawberries. Everyone keeps an eye on them to catch the strawberries when they are at their ripest. The fluid and casual nature of our gardening seems to suit everyone. Harvesting will be done by those who work in the garden. However, we are happy for people to pick small amounts of herbs, one reason why we have so many parsley plants.

We meet each Sunday at 10.30am to work in the garden and we have a roster for watering. We mulch with lucerne straw.

Some plants currently growing in the garden include: heirloom tomatoes, blueberries, carrots, arugula, beetroot, chives, purple climbing beans, "Lazy Housewife beans", Jalapeno chillies, sweet corn, arugula and mesclun mix of lettuces. Our herbs include: perennial basil and lettuce leaf basil, variegated sage, lots of parsley, pot celery, thyme and lemon scented thyme, golden marjoram and rosemary.

UPDATE - Official Opening of Milson Community Garden on Sunday 8th Nov 2009 from Carole and as posted on the North Sydney Council website.

10.30am - visit the garden
11.00am - Opening by Mayor of North Sydney, Genia McCaffery
11.30am - Refreshments, live jazz band

The photos below are from Carole and my hubby, Jean-Jacques Halans.

UPDATE - Sun 8th Nov 2009

More photos from the garden and the official openening are now shared on our Flickr group:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/milson-community-garden/. If you were there, please upload your photos.

If you have video from the opening, please let me know and I'll arrange to have it uploaded to our YouTube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/MCGgardeners.

A HUGE THANK YOU to everyone who made this wonderful garden happen; to everyone who sponsored, helped out on the day of the openening, brought platters with scrumptious food and nibbles,  drinks and to everyone who was there to help us celebrate!

 

First harvests and new faces every week

Word about our community garden sure has been spreading. Local newspapers and our little blog (www.milsoncommunitygarden.org) has been sharing our experiences and we've had some great feedback so far.

Every week new faces come along to volunteer and the atmosphere is fantastic. We've had some great harvests of letucces, zucchini flowers, strawberries and herbs (all organic). It's been great fun and I hope we can expand the garden and "export" the idea to neighbouring councils.

Another bumper harvest of organic, locally grown fruit and vedg

Sunday 13 Dec 2009

Another beautiful day in Milson Community Garden. Our volunteers were out in full force this morning and we were joined by foodies experts and journo's, Carli Ratcliff (SMH Good Living, aka @carliratcliff) and Rebecca Varidel (InsideCuisine.com, aka @frombecca on Twitter).

Live Local regulars will surely know Becca from her excellent Live Local Challenge experiment. A big thank you to Becca for live tweeting this morning! I hope we catch up again soon and help convince more local councils to support these kinds of projects. Spread the good, healthy vibes...

What a great harvest... again, and what a fantastic community atmosphere. Our heirloom vegetables got some extra TLC.

Just posted some photos from this morning on Flickr and on our Posterous blog. Enjoy!

 

Megalicious harvest!

Comments (8)

Picture of user DaveGravina

What an awesome project! Thank you for sharing this inspiring story with us Radica. It shows that you can also have great success taking the official approach and seeking council permission rather than the guerrilla gardening route (which also seems to work most of the time!)

See this article on newmatilda.com about the Yarra council in Melbourne which recently ruled to not only keep its unofficial gardens but t champion them!

Picture of user jmm

Nice photos, too!

@Dave Gravina

Thanks! I'll tell Carole and the gang and will be posting our progress during the coming months.
Great article! Seems Victoria is a bit ahead of the bunch here in Australia. When I browse around for articles and news about the environment and sustainability, Victorian projects pop-up all the time.
Very inspiring!

@Jonh Mac - Thanks! I'll let them know ;-)
And there will be more to come...

 

Beautiful pictures, Radica.  Actually, the project started as guerilla gardening when the dog walking crowd took over the Council maintained garden beds in Milson Park. They planted herbs, potatoes and corn much to irritation of the Council staff who kept pulling out those early plantings.  Council funds followed the initial guerilla garden.

 

Picture of user Radzster

@Anonymous
Thanks!  Well... I had no idea guerilla gardening was the "incubator" for the current community garden? So funny. I can almost imagine council staff grumbling while pulling out the veggies amidst the roses. ;-) But, they obviously "warmed" to the idea and now we've got a magnificent, accessible garden to plotter in. I hope all the guerilla gardeners will come and join us on Sunday mornings and help us take over the whole park!

You guys rock. This is such an inspirational project, to see the community getting together like this. It renews my faith in the human race. It makes me want to go nuts.

Picture of user GJO ESQ

Excellent work!!  Looks like I'll have to add a community garden in my neighbourhood to my list of activities for 2010!

Picture of user Radzster

Hi Gregory,

Happy New Year ;-)  You seem to be doing lots of inspiring community and sustainability projects in Randwick? Great stuff!!! Love the detailed reports.

Thanks. Yes, it's been an amazing experience so far with the community garden. Every week new people approach us to join in and the harvests are getting bigger and better too.

And, it's definitely contagious... I mentioned the garden to one of my neigbours who is also a proprietor (I live in a small block of 9 appts). She is the loveliest lady... and has helped the other owners and the strata agree on us planting and managing our own vedgie patch in the property garden (currently lawn). We're getting stuck in later this month. Will keep you posted.

cheers,
Radica

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