Under the Choko Tree By Nevin Sweeney

Starting a Veggie Gardening Group (Part 2)

The Story Continues.......

It took a while but the St Clair backyard veggie gardener’s group is now up and running. In the end while we only got one expression of interest from the Saturday morning stall at the shops, a number came from other areas. Notably two different very enthusiastic families contacted the website after seeing flyers in the local library and one lady became interested after visiting us on Permaculture Day. Now with a committed core of people we are able to start regular meetings and we can work on getting more members as we go.

Venue

The obvious venue is one of your group’s houses if anyone has the room; because it is comfortable, safe, amenities are in place and it is free. In our case, because I was setting it up the obvious place would have been at our house but we didn’t have the room to fit everyone in so I had to look farther afield, specifically facilities provided by our local council.

Our Venue

In the end there was a community cottage behind our local shops available for rent and they had a vacancy on Monday evenings so I chose the third Monday of the month and a quick email to the members confirmed that this was OK. Due to the fact we were a community group the rent was set at a very reasonable $10.50 per hour and we only needed the venue for 2 hours. It is certainly large enough to take far more than our current 10-12 people so as the group (hopefully) grows we will have no trouble accommodating the new members.

Another bonus is that if we have 10 or fewer meetings a year we are covered by the council’s public liability insurance policy, although if site visits to each other’s houses or other places are on your agenda  as they are on ours, it would be wise to check into the costs associated with public liability insurance. If it is agreeable to the members the cost of the insurance would be borne by everyone so there would not be too great a financial burden on the organiser.

After the group agreed on the venue and timing of the meetings at the first meeting I booked out the venue for the following year so that we are guaranteed a place to meet. Other possibilities are your local school if you have any contacts, they may be able to arrange the use of their facilities or your church if you attend one may allow you to use one of their rooms for meetings.

Promotion

Here is what our flyer looks like

One of the easiest ways to promote your group is to develop and print some flyers that say a bit about your group and give contact details, I used both my home email and email/guestbook details for our website, at the very least include a phone number. Once developed you can put a flyer up and leave take away copies in any of the following locations in your local area, assuming they give you permission, to get to your target audience -

• Doctors surgery
• Health food shops
• Day care centres
• Local library

Other ways you can get the word out is to see if you can get a press release put into your local School and/or community newsletter or approach your local papers that can be positively inclined towards community groups. Also try approaching a community radio station if one exists in your local area although even the mainstream radio stations sometimes have time set aside for community service announcements and could give your veggie gardening group a plug.

The meeting

Tea and Coffee Making Facilities are Good to Have

Even before the meeting started I arranged to have tea, coffee, sugar and milk as well as some sweet biscuits with me for refreshments after the meeting. You shouldn't rely on your venue to provide them so take some with you just in case they don’t; it is a very nice way to end the meeting by having an informal chat over tea and coffee. I got there early and set up the chairs in a semi-circle so that everyone could see everyone else, in front of a wall that I had set up butcher paper on, holding it up with blutack to record ideas. I also took 8 or 10 books about veggie gardening from my library and placed them on a table to one side of the room so that people could have a browse through while having their coffee or tea.

Setting up the room prior to the meeting

I put a sign on the front door of the cottage so people would see that this was where the meeting was and provided a sign-in sheet at the front of the room including a place to enter their email. In this way I could make sure that everyone was able to receive copies of notes from the meeting as well as reminders for the next meeting and any other details required.

After welcoming everyone and thanking them for their attendance the first point was to confirm that the time, date and venue were suitable for future meetings and then confirm the date of the next meeting. We then went around the room and each person was given an opportunity to speak, telling the group 3 things -

• Their name,
• What experience they had with growing vegetables, and
• What they would like to get out of the group/see the group do.

Happy smiling faces

While I as the facilitator recorded each person’s responses to the third point on butcher paper so we could build up a idea of where group members wanted to go, a few of the responses are listed below –

• Learn how to grow vegetables better.
• Make the best use of what you’ve got.
• Learn to grow vegetables organically ie without chemicals.
• How to plan a vegetable garden, what to plant when etc.
• Be more self sufficient.
• Share ideas and learn from each other.
• Learn how to set up and maintain a worm farm.
• Learn about growing and using medicinal herbs.
• Learn about preserving the harvest.
• Learn how to companion plant.
• Learn about chooks in the back yard.
• Learn about composting.
• Get together to do practical learning workshops like plant propagation or pruning.
• Have workshops or working bees at each other’s houses regularly.



It was decided that this list could be added to in subsequent meetings. The concept of having a guest speaker eg someone from a local Permaculture group to discuss Permaculture principles; or to show a DVD related to vegetable culture was discussed and accepted. There was also a short discussion around what would be the ideals of the group and these were agreed to be –

• Have fun.
• Save money.
• Connect with like minded local people.
• Share ideas and experience.
• Learn new things.

The Book Table

Once the meeting is concluded (and tea, coffee and biscuits happily consumed) it is important to return the room to its original condition and clean up afterwards so that you get invited back to use the facilities again! All that remains then is to type up any notes of the meeting (I hesitate to be so formal as to call them “minutes”) and email them out to the members.

The Story Continues.......

It is still early days for the group, which will hopefully go from strength to strength, but I suppose you will have to wait for part 3 to find out.

Starting a Veggie Gardeners Group - Back to Part 1

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