This has been my first twelve months in the Convener role, and I feel privileged to be involved in such a dynamic and thriving community organisation. This year, we have consolidated our gardening activities and at the same time, expanded our activities in new and exciting areas.

The Garden

In the past twelve months, the drought has broken and we have been blessed with deep and frequent rains, a welcome change to the past few years. Our vegetables and fruit trees are thriving, and instead of bucket watering we have been able to spend more garden time planting and harvesting our crops.

We had some wild weather, resulting in the bridge across the creek being washed away, and a large tree branch falling down. The branch was mulched and used to make paths around the beds. 

This year we planted several banana trees around the garden, many of which are thriving on the rain. Thanks to Jane for organising the purchase of these trees.

In many ways, this year has been one of consolidation- we’ve only created one new garden bed, but revitalised many of the existing beds. Members worked hard at our monthly working bees, and children enjoyed Friday afternoon gardening sessions. Thanks must go to Kelly Greenop and family for dedicating their Friday afternoons to hosting this important initiative.

This year we have enjoyed a wide variety of different foods, though usually in small quantities. Our bumper Rosella harvest yielded many bottles of lovely jam for members and long discussions about the perfect Rosella Jam recipe! We harvested potatoes, tomatoes, Brazillian spinach, sweet potatoes, many different herbs, limes, mulberries, lettuces, radishes, chillies, eggplants and many more. Our aim now is to increase the frequency of our plantings through better planning, and hopefully increase the amount of food that is grown in the garden. I encourage members to visit the garden regularly and pick whatever is ripe and ready to eat, as there is plenty to go around.

We’ve been working on ways to improve our communication when talking about the garden. Ruth worked with students to number the garden beds and we started a new Garden Record Book, for members to write about what they have done when visiting the garden. In coming months, this book will include planting plans for each bed, to make it easier for members to know what to do when down at the garden.

We received the donation of a shade house, complete with a watering system, to enable us to grow seedlings, and this has been invaluable during the hotter months. It will be great to see this used more in the coming year to grow more seedlings and reduce our reliance on purchased plants.

Safety is always a high priority for us, and this year we purchased a new first aid kit and continued our policy of giving new members a safety briefing and tour of the garden when they join.

The Brisbane City Council erected a community noticeboard for the garden, which provides a great hub for sharing of information, and provides a means for us to communicate with residents in the area.

Community engagement and partnerships

The Vera Street Community Garden strengthened our existing partnership with the Science, Maths and Technology Academy through hosting students in their Creativity, Action, Service (CAS) program. Garden members Ruth Brown and Jane Bell gave generously of their time each week to work with a small group of students at the garden. The students worked on many small projects around the garden, including keeping bamboo at bay, and laying woodchip paths between the garden beds. They also had a weed identification session with our Creek Catchment Ranger, Michael Thorley. 

Together with Bridget Toner from Food Connect, Kelly Greenop and I gave a public lecture at Toowong Library to around 50 interested people on the topic of Sustainable Food Systems. I spoke to the Cuberla Witton Creek Catchment group about our Grow Your Own Veggies course.

Unfortunately the Green Choice Expo was postponed due to torrential rain, and we missed it when it was rescheduled. We plan to be involved with this again next year, as it’s a great opportunity to speak with people in our community.

This year we ran our first course for beginner gardeners, called ‘Grow Your Own Veggies’. The course ran on Saturday mornings for 4 weeks, and attracted 11 new members to the garden. Thanks to Alison Philpott for using her professional training skills to impart her significant gardening knowledge to participants. Feedback from the course was great, and it would be good to run this again in the future.

Reflecting the wider community’s interest in growing your own food, we received local press, television and radio coverage this year. We were interviewed by 612ABC Brisbane’s Phil Smith, and most recently we were mentioned in the Courier Mail’s QWeekend magazine. The Garden hosted a bevy of media when Councillor Peter Matic announced City Council funding for new community gardens in Brisbane.

We also communicated with West Toowong residents through our inaugural newsletter, which informed residents about our Grow Your Own Veggies course and plans for a shed at the garden.

We continued our partnership with Queensland Water and Land Carers by participating in the South East Qld Natural Resources and Mines Planning Forum. Jane Bell, Ruth Brown and Carolyn Berezovsky attended on behalf of the Community Garden, and contributed to the development of common Natural Resource Management targets. Members regularly receive updates and invitations to attend interesting events held by QWALC and its member organisations. Members were recently invited to contribute to the Draft Rehab plan for Toowong and Sandy Creeks Catchments and adjacent areas. We thank QWALC for continuing to support the Vera Street Community Garden through our public liability and indemnity insurance.

Our website received a boost this year with the purchase of a new domain name, www.verastreetgarden.org. This is much easier to remember than our previous addresses, and is receiving significant traffic. The current site is a little over a year old, and we regularly receive positive comments about the currency and usefulness of the site to people who are interested in us or community gardens in general. As well as keeping the site up to date, we have added all our membership forms and risk management procedures to the site, enabling new members to complete all their forms before they come down to the garden. A new feature of the site is a list of volunteer roles available to members.

Grants

This year we have been fortunate to receive funding from three sources.

Firstly we received a Federal Volunteer Equipment grant of $1500 to purchase a petrol mulcher and fencing material. The new mulcher enables us to create compost with less time and effort than previously, and is useful for recycling green waste at the garden. Thank you Lynn de Lange for organising this grant on behalf of the Garden.

Secondly, we received a grant of $3595 from Queensland’s 150 Celebrations Unit to host a bush dance, build a small bush tucker garden and bury a time capsule at the community garden. We are pleased to announce that plans for the bush dance are underway and it will be held on the Saturday 17th of October. Thank you Kelly Greenop for organising this grant, and for coordinating the event.

Thirdly, we received a grant of $6000 from the Lord Mayor’s Suburban Initiative Fund for building materials and labour to build a shed on the garden site. Thanks to Councillor Peter Matic for helping us with this.

We are currently in the process of applying for a Gambling Community Benefits Fund grant to build a shed on the garden site. While the final quotes are still being gathered, it is likely that the amount requested will be in the vicinity of $30,000. Thank you Ruth Brown, for coordinating the application. This represents the largest grant that we have applied for to date, and if accepted, will be a significant asset to the garden, which will open up a whole raft of new opportunities to us for gardening and other community development at the garden site.

After initial discussions with members, Kelly Greenop drew up plans for the shed. We then sought permission and support from the SMT Academy, and sought support from the wider community. We investigated the possibility of getting solar panels, but dismissed this idea when it became evident that we would need to re-site the shed to obtain enough light. Garden member, Li-anne Woo suggested we investigate pre-fabricated options, and this enabled us to fast-track our grant application. We are currently in the process of arranging certification so that we can submit our grant application.

Membership

Our membership rose 60 percent this year, largely due to our Grow Your Own Veggies Starter Course and our talk at the Toowong Library about sustainable food systems.

We currently have 45 members. 16 were continued from last year, 29 are new members. 8 members from last year have lapsed membership. Our challenge this year is to encourage and support all members to contribute to the garden in a way that suits them. To assist with this, we have launched a new page on our website with a range of roles that we need members to take on.  

Thanks to members and committee

Although I have been speaking about things that that Garden has achieved this year, the garden as a place and as an organisation is nothing without the dedication, ideas, passion and work of its members.

So, I would now like to pay tribute to all members who have helped in the garden this year.

We are all living busy lives, whether we are working or caring for loved ones. But somehow we find the time to come down to the garden on a Sunday and pull some weeds, send some emails for the garden, do some administrative tasks, and all the little things that need to happen to keep an organisation like ours running. At some times in our lives we can offer a lot; at other times we have to rely on others to keep things going. And that is okay- that is why we have a community garden.

I would like to pay tribute to the things that have happened in our lives as a community this year. We have experienced sadness in the passing away of long term residents Kev and Edna Richardson, in the death and sickness of many of our parents and grandparents. We have had long term garden supporter Grace Duggan and Aimee Ting move out of the neighbourhood due to renovations on their rental home. We have also experienced joy, with the birth of Raj and Parvesh Gupta’s baby, with the planting of my son Nick’s tree to celebrate his birth.

I want to personally thank the Committee, of Jane Bell, Kelly Greenop, Raj Gupta and Cathy Renkin, who have been a tremendous support to me, when I have struggled at times with my transition to full-time motherhood.

This Vera Street Community Garden is all of us, it is the visible result of our dreams for this space and our hard work. And so I thank you all for continuing to believe in what this garden can become, and for all the things- great and small- that you are doing to help. 

Naomi Waldron 
Convener 
May 2009

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