What Do You Want Your Community Garden To Be?

I know, quite along winded title but it's a question I want everyone to think about? What do you want your community garden to be?

For us who regularly attend, I can say on behalf of all that it's about friendship and being able to garden effectively. It's a place that brings connection through a passion for gardening and nature.

It's truly an amazing place and with recent groups such as Early Years Care who come along and enjoy the space, it makes it an even more valuable and special place for the extended community.

As I express what the garden means to me I want you to think about what it means to you.

The most obvious thing about a garden is the planting, growth and the harvest of food and plants. However, there are other things that grow as a by product such as, friendship, learning new skills, eating well, creativity of many kinds and a sense of joy to be alive.

One of the creative things that have grown organically within the space is the idea of performing a pantomime. What the heck??? Non of us are experts in the field of performing but we are going to give it a go. See what I mean? We have nurtured a can do attitude!

For me personally, I have enjoyed the freedom to paint, create, sing a song, build teepee's, mosaic, watch other people cook, make friends and have my world enlarged.

My vision is to see the space become an out door class room for many different groups for all ages. I would love to start getting people engaged with creative activities or maybe it can be a space where people can picnic and have a rest from what ever bothers them. Community gardens are awesome and I greatly encourage others to be involved and to hopefully show how not only is it about gardening but it's so much more if you let it

We often eat well

And the creativity is shared

and we have our community groups

Sharing the Harvest

Cliff Came up with a top idea for our excess produce and was able to hand over a lot of food to a local charity called The Food Barn Warrawong, which is connected to The Hope Centre.

This is yet another positive and wonderful way of how a community garden can impact the neighbourhood and society. As people are increasingly finding it hard to keep up with bills or even find somewhere to live, community gardens is one of many solutions I believe that can address the mentioned crisis.

More focus and execution of such projects need to be implemented as this demonstrates a positive solution to an ever growing problem of families being short of cash. The reason why its important; is a community garden promotes friendship,  food education, innovation, hope and being able to obtain a yield. 

With that yield comes food, recipes, confidence, a sense of joy and being able to give back to the community and these things should never be underestimated!!