We have kept busy in the last few weeks and I felt it was time to share the fantastic fruits of the work that has been carried out by our community garden volunteers. I want to thank particularly the ones who have been involved in the very intense last few weeks: Heidi, Kevin, Puspa, Sonny, Abshir and Yakup. The garden has started producing a sizable amount of silver beat and lettuce which has been shared with the volunteers and many public housing residents, as a tangible (and edible) way to promote the garden (better than a leaflet, I'd say :)).
In addition to this, you will see a beautiful mural that has been put together by a crew from Workforce Plus, skilfully led by Michael. Here are some pictures to illustrate all this, as you can see they have been taken with a bit of a festive spirit, as the end of the year approaches. Thanks to Jo for modeling! :)
It's been a couple of months again so I decided an update on the community garden was well overdue! What started as a tiny strip of cultivated land has become a significant project now and more importantly, the group of dedicated community garden volunteers keeps growing and growing!
Over the last few weeks we have been meeting at least every fortnight to plan the work for the next few months and as soon as we received all the seeds we ordered, we organised a gathering to start doing some serious planting. The conditions were pretty chilly out there but Heidi, George, Frank, Chan, Stan, Kevin and Abshir did a fantastic job. Apart from some pictures of our fantastic volunteers, I am also including a diagram of our garden and a list of all that has been planted so far.
Garden beds: 1. Nothing yet 2. Nothing yet 3. Nothing yet 4. Cauliflowers 5. Climbing beans 6. Nothing yet 7. Fenugreeks, Red Cabbages 8. Parsnips, chamomile 9. Beetroot 9. Nothing yet 10. Kidney beans, garlic chives 11. Nothing yet 12. Aloe Vera, red onions 13. Just finished preparation works 14. Starting from top to bottom: herbs (basil, thyme, rosemary, parsley, coriander), several types of lettuce, silver beat, beetroot, chilli, cabbage, broccoli.
In addition to this, we are working with a group of people from Workforce Plus who are designing a mural for one of the walls. Once this mural is complete they will plant a range of edible indigenous plants and several fruit trees along the fence.
After a few weeks we are back with some amazing news, the community gardens is ready to go! We now have twelve brand new raised garden beds and we have maintained the initial strip with which we started, which is now looking great thanks to our volunteer Heidi.
The timing could not be better as all the garden beds were installed just in time for the young people participating in our School Holiday Program to decorate them as part of the Art Day.
I think this post does not need any more words, perhaps just a few to thank Jason Summers from Hume City Council and the crew from Workforce Plus who have made all this possible. The artwork was skillfully directed by Alex Prado from the Centre for Multicultural Youth. So here are the pictures!
As you can see the drought seems to have captured the imagination of the young participants, I love the mixture of serious messages with some cheeky sense of humour!
It would be great if the bloggers could vote on the best animation using the poll on the right. I did promise some prizes for the best story and I have not been able to pick a winner by myself...
Today I want to show you something that I am particularly proud of.
Every term Banksia Gardens Community Centre delivers Stop Motion Animation Workshops for young people with some funding from Hume City Council.
For four weeks participants (aged 8-16) learn some basic techniques and go on to developing their own stories. This time we asked them to produce stories with an environmental theme.
With the great help of the facililator, Alex Machin (terrific guy!), last term's group has managed to produce three incredible movies that I will post over the next couple of days. Well done!
We come to you with some refreshing news (pun inteded)!
Banksia Gardens Community Centre, in partnership with Yarra Valley Water, and with support from Hume City Council, is starting a Showerhead Exchange Program with an interesting twist.
Rather than waiting for people to come to us with their old showerheads, we have decided to trial the idea of going to people's houses to try and organise the exchange on the spot. We believe that this will allow us to reach many more households and to make a valuable personal connection that will be used for other programs under the Eco Warriors Project.
The process of getting the program organised has been extremely interesting, particularly given the disparity in the size of the organisations involved.
The new showerheads will be arriving to Banksia next Monday, we can't wait!
