Starting a community vegetable gardening group in the Western Suburbs by Greg Harriden
If you have read my article on conducting community workshops, you should read this one as well. It is written by Greg Harriden, my partner in crime in the community workshop business. Greg is a community worker who was respinsible for conceiving the idea and then funding the idea, which I was able to help make a reality, at least in part. Anyway, here is the process from an alternative viewpoint.
Nev Sweeney
‘Developing’ communities: frustrating, ambiguous, exciting
When I was employed as a community development worker in a small organisation in Western Sydney, I was given a relatively clean slate to work with. The community that I was to ‘develop’ was a small suburb with only 1000 dwellings, housing around 3,500 inhabitants. At the centre of town was a community centre with ample space and facilities including kitchen, two large halls and an outdoor area with lush green lawn and patio. At the time there was very little activity at the centre and my aim was to re-invigorate community participation in the space.
Community development can be a double-edged sword. When your only real mandate is to build rapport with local residents and organisations (meet people and chat with them), respond to community needs and desires (listen) and start developing some tangible activities that respond to these needs (create a space for other people to chat and listen to each other), your goals can seem a little ill-defined. For most community workers there are endless arrays of activities that can be implemented- the only limitation being the scope of one’s imagination. This lack of direction can be daunting. However it can also be exciting. For the first few months in my new role I was slightly overwhelmed with the ambiguity. My days were taken up with meetings with local service providers, handing out surveys in the local shopping centre and wading through the ethereal web of the internet for inspiration. I had little idea if I was meeting with the right people, if the surveys were relevant and if I was not kidding myself thinking my hours perusing the internet were productive in any way.
However after some time the ambiguity gradually gave way to a new-found energy. The catalyst for this occurred on the last working day of the year. My colleagues and I had just finished exchanging Kris Kringle gifts and stuffing ourselves with savoury and sweet Christmas delights when my manager drew my attention to a new round of funding that had just opened up through the local council. The funding related to a community-arts based project aimed at developing local physical spaces into sites that would bring people together. For some time I had been flirting with the idea of trying to develop a community gardening project in my community. My eyes lit up when I saw the funding proposal form and I thought this may be my chance.
The Proposal
There were only two main problems. Firstly, the proposal was due on the 11th of January. This also happened to be my first day back at work in the New Year and like most of my fellow countrywo/men I planned to spend my break alternating between frolicking in and complaining about the heat. This would leave little time for writing up funding proposals. The second problem was that while a community garden would certainly create a space in which people could come together, share ideas and engage in meaningful activity together, it did not necessarily fall into the category of an arts project- at least not in the traditional sense. I was too full of cake to tackle such problems at that moment so I relegated the idea to the back of my mind and gave myself an early mark.
Over the summer break I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was an opportunity that I should pursue. While cavorting in the woods (and the 45 degree heat) with some hippies at a new year’s music and arts festival I came across a man doing a talk about community gardens. This particular chap had been part of a group that set up a community garden in a suburb on the northern beaches. Although his microphone didn’t work and most of his audience was stoned, he spoke with a mix of enthusiasm for the project and impudence for council authorities. Both of these things appealed to me. I spoke with him after the talk and his message was clear: It can be done! All you need is a lot of enthusiasm………… oh, and some money. How much money exactly? Well let’s just say I was expecting the necessary funding pool to be at least one zero shorter than it was. Again I was left feeling uncertain; was it worth pursuing this path if it was not going to be viable to establish such a large amount of money?
Furthermore, even if I was able to acquire funding from the council I would need to get the support of a community artist. One of my friends happened to be an artist whose works deal with questions of social inclusion and community- close enough to a community artist, right? I asked if he would mind putting his name to the project and he was happy to do so. After numerous discussions with him about how to include an artistic component into the project proposal, my enthusiasm grew and the question of whether or not the funds would be adequate to start an actual garden seemed to take a backseat. This marked a pivotal point in the process and was indicative of the attitude that I believe one needs to take into such a venture. That is, don’t focus too much on the barriers. If your gut tells you it will work, then give it a crack. (An age old cliche, but in this case a truism.)
When I returned to work in the New Year I spent the first day back frantically writing and re-writing the funding proposal to council. It was throughout this process that I realised that all the meetings in the latter half of the previous year were useful after all. Like a lot of funding proposals this particular application required evidence that the project would be supported by a number of parties including community members, organisations and other key stakeholders within the community. I was surprised at how willing some of these players were to pledge their support to the project. By four thirty I had put together what I thought was a relatively strong proposal and I was getting ready to leave for the day… until I received an email from one council department stating that I would have to prove that I had permission from another council department to use the patch of land I had proposed as the site for the garden.
When I look back on that day, I imagine the grin that must have emerged on the face of the Facilities Co-ordinator at council when she received an email at quarter to five from an enthusiastic, but naïve, young community worker casually asking to dig up a sizeable patch of land on which there had been no safety assessment carried out, for a project that did not even exist yet. Thankfully, she was gentle on me. She showed support for my idea but was obliged to compile a list of about ten important questions that would have to be addressed before council could even consider granting access to the land. These included everything from project logistics (Would the area be fenced off? Who would be given access to ensure it is maintained?) to mundane OH & S concerns (Is there access to toilets? Where would tools be stored?). The radical in me was frustrated with these barriers. Surely there was a time in the not too distant past when our relatives, feeling the desire to plant some vegetables, saw a patch of land, decided whether it was viable and went for it. Perhaps it was the image of their faces, smirking at the absurdity of the strips of dull red tape plastered across my computer screen, which spurred me on. This list of barriers seemed insurmountable, if only because they had to be overcome in the space of half an hour. But they were not going to stop me submitting my application. I put together a rough list of responses to them and emailed them off. I also shot through my application to the department in charge of funding for the project and marked the progress for land allocation as ‘pending’. I did not hold out a lot of hope but felt satisfied that I had given it my best effort.
The Project
The good news came a few weeks later. Council had granted me $5000 for project development. This was not the full amount that we had applied for, nor was it being provided to implement a community vegetable garden. Rather, it was to provide the funds for the groundwork: consulting with the community, rallying together support, drawing up plans, encouraging the community to envision their dreams for the space. Again, these are all extremely malleable concepts. And when working with communities one can either choose to be constricted by this endless list of ambiguous terms and concepts, or stretch them as far as their elasticity will allow. If you have a goal that you feel is unique and worthwhile, then you will be drawn to the latter.
My initial desire was to run a series of community vegetable gardening workshops at the community centre. I felt this would satisfy the various (and in some ways conflicting) provisos placed upon the project by the various council departments: that no immediate alterations be made to the landscape or the grounds of the community centre; that the groundwork be put in place for the possible future development of a garden; and that the project serve as a place-building exercise. I had recently heard about some local initiatives run by TAFE and council such as composting, worm-farming and veggie gardening in-a-box workshops. I thought something similar would work well. However I was unsure where I was going to find someone qualified enough to run such workshops without blowing our budget in the first two weeks. Here my earlier attempts at rapport-building with local organisations served to be useful once again. I met with the coordinator of a local community farm that I had liaised with a few times in the past. She said she would not be able to run the groups due to commitments at her farm but put me in contact with a local man named Nevin who she thought might be interested.
We arranged a meeting with Nevin and after explaining what my aims were he immediately agreed to jump on board. Along with having undertaken a variety of horticulture-related courses, Nevin explained that he had spent the last 20 years turning his backyard into somewhat of a permaculture wonderland. Nevin was knowledgeable and passionate about vegetable gardening and sustainability more generally. Furthermore, his skills were largely self-taught; a reflection of the attitude that if you have an idea worth following, you should just do it. This was a crucial point in the overall process and without Nevin’s support the project would not have been able to go ahead- at least not in the form that it did. It may be possible to characterise Nevin’s involvement as a piece of really good luck. But perhaps it is also necessary to evoke the spirit that I mentioned earlier: Don’t focus too much on the barriers. If your gut tells you it will work, then give it a crack. If I am honest I was never really certain who I was going to get to run the workshops. I just believed in the project and trusted in the fact that everything would turn out well.
As mentioned earlier, when given an agenda that is malleable, one needs to take advantage of that malleability. Applied to this particular project, working with the elasticity of concepts such as ‘consultation’ and ‘community engagement’ meant that the proposed ‘groundwork’ became much more than mere consultation or project development- it was a meaningful and vibrant project in itself. We carried out a series of eight community vegetable gardening workshops focusing on topics such as creating your own seed raising mix, vegetable gardening in a box, organic pest control and making a worm farm. Participants learnt the theory behind the topics but also had a chance to get their hands dirty. The workshops were carried out in alignment with DIY principles in acknowledgement of the fact that many people do not have a lot of extra money floating about. This also meant that the workshops themselves were cheap to run. After a couple of weeks the workshops received some publicity in the local paper and this increased the number of attendees. By the end of the workshops, people had been provided with a chance to share ideas, learn a few things and most importantly make friends. We are still uncertain whether or not we will be able to acquire that elusive patch of land to start a full blown vegetable garden. However, the group is only just getting started and I get the feeling that the best days are yet to come.
Lessons Learned
I have mentioned a number of principles that guided me throughout the process of starting a community vegetable garden group as a community development worker in a small organisation in Western Sydney. Possibly most importantly was a belief in the integrity of the project. Subsequently I made an attempt not to get too caught up in the barriers and trust in the process. There were also a number of other slightly more specific lessons I learned that are worth making note of.
- It doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg. I was deterred when I was informed how much it had to cost for other communities to set up full blown community gardens. However, starting a group like ours was not expensive at all- due in part to the DIY ethic that underpinned the workshops. At the time of writing we have completed the eight workshops and still have plenty of money to spare. We plan to use the remaining funds to install some seats and plant some fruit trees. (Possibly the first steps towards bringing my initial vision of the space into being?) This is taking into consideration the fact that participants did not have to pay anything and were provided with all necessary materials. If group members are willing to put in a small contribution each week, it would be possible to run similar workshops on next to nothing.
- Spread the word. It is difficult to know which avenues to promote such a group. We put flyers in the local shopping centre, GP surgeries, a day care centre, local school newsletter, etc. However, word of mouth can be just as effective. From my experience people like to hear about these types of initiatives from someone they know and/or trust. Our numbers grew just as much as a result of community members spreading the word amongst the people on their street than anything else. Advertisement in the local newspaper was also very effective. I was placed at an advantage working for a community organisation. Through my connections with council I gained access to good press. However there is no reason that community members cannot approach the local rag and try and get their group in the paper. Finally, when promoting a group like this there a few key hooks one can utilise: create a better future for your kids; save money!
- Be prepared for the red tape. Unfortunately when starting a community group, there are often a whole variety of barriers that arise from local authorities. As I have stated, it is important not to let these deter you. Often council merely wants to see that there is enough support to ensure a project is going to be sustainable. Be pro-active. Get together a committed group of people, hound council (as well as the community organisations that represent you) and demonstrate that this is what your community wants.
- Start small. My original vision for the community centre involved a full blown community garden, with an army of vegetables sprouting from every corner. I imagined passers-by admiring the ripe tomatoes beckoning them to take a few home for tonight’s salad. This vision was gradually humbled and the group commenced with half a dozen interested locals learning how to sow seeds. But this was ok. Like the seeds we sowed, the workshops germinated and flourished. And as for my original vision, this still remains. But now a whole group of people also have a vision. And while each individual has different ideas and desires, the vision is, to some extent, shared. And now that we have numbers, the list of barriers seems much less formidable.
