Perth Community Gardens
On my journey back from Geraldton I stayed in Perth for a few days, before my return journey on the Indian Pacific train across the Nullarbor.
I visited three community gardens – Perth City Farm just outside the central business district, Earthwise Community Garden in Subiaco and the Lockridge Community Garden. There are numerous gardens in Perth, a project has been running here in WA to support existing gardens and help new ones to establish. All these gardens rely on volunteers. Grants for infrastructure are available, but money is rarely given to hire people to do the work. So gardens rely on volunteers and what they can fundraise.
I have a soft spot for Community Gardens – it was at the Ballarat East Community Garden a couple of years ago that I learnt how to grow (and harvest and cook) my own veggies – watching and talking to the old hands there.
City Farm has been established the longest in Perth, about 15 years. They run an organic Farmer’s Market here every Saturday, as well as Festivals a couple of times a year to raise money. Some art work has even been incorporated into the site amongst the plants.
They have an impressive composting system, providing nutrients and material for the garden beds. What they need is more people to volunteer in the gardens – weeding, planting etc – to get full productivity from the space.
The Earthwise Community Garden in Subiaco surrounds a Church building. They have done a lot of work on the site to establish garden beds and plant them out with fruit trees, berries and perennial plants such as herbs. They also appreciate volunteers, there is a group who meet once each week to work on the gardens.
One interesting thing they are doing, among many, is using worm castings. There is a great business in Perth which collects green waste from office buildings, and uses this for food for worm farms. They supply the worm castings that are produced to community gardens such as this one. This is great I reckon, we need to be mindful of the waste we produce in all areas of our life, and the workplace is one of them. So to be using a resource, that would otherwise be treated as rubbish, to produce wonderful soil is a great idea.
The Lockridge Community Garden is relatively new, having been started about 3 years ago. It was started by a group of people who live in the area, and are committed to encouraging people in the community to grow their own veggies.
They have a day a week where volunteers come to maintain the garden and plant and harvest veggies. They also have a number of fruit trees. They have built a pizza oven, which they use on weekends when they run workshops for instance.
They are hoping to encourage people to grow their own veggies, and swap them amongst themselves. Another project they would like to run is to start up a community shop or co-op, where people can buy healthy organic food in bulk. There are no shops in the area. An ideal for them would be to have a farm linked to the community in Lockridge which could supply fresh organic produce, much like the Catholic Worker model in the USA.
