Barwon Heads Community Arts Garden

Location: Moonah Gates Park- Geelong Rd, Barwon Heads Victoria
Start Date: June 21st 2007 (sod turning, sign raising) and March 18th 2008 Garden officially opened.
Expected Completion Date: 3 year staged infrastructure plan/ project to be sustainable and ongoing.

Project Concept:

The BHCAG is an “off the grid” Permaculture demonstration site showcasing sustainable lifestyle options whilst creating a sense of place and identity within the greater community. This is in the form of a community garden.

We aim at creating a beautiful, productive, healthy and social community gathering space, a shared backyard that is available to all ages and abilities by making Permaculture and sustainable lifestyle options accessible, fun and friendly and also in the process create community by supporting artistic endeavors.

Description:

The BHCAG is a volunteer, not-for-profit incorporated Community Garden set on a site area of 2275m2 (35 x 65m) within a greater park area known as the Moonah Gates Park. Our park backs onto a pocket of protected remnant Moonah forest which we also help caretake with the “Adopt a Park” program.

We have created a community gathering space in a recycled ex-Dept of Education portable that also is our roof for harvesting water into our tanks to support our communal garden and our personal allotments. We encourage garden holders to be creative in their space whilst also be sensitive to what they plant as we are always conscious about water-wise gardening techniques.

Several different groups meet to garden during the week, including disadvantaged and disabled youth and work for the dole programs. We have established partnerships with local businesses and other community and sporting clubs, the Wautharong co-op, Rotary, Lions Club, Green Corp and Conservation Australia Volunteers and the local primary school as we are supporting the establishment of the school kitchen garden.

This is the only project that we know of in this region to have established such overwhelming community support and sense of inclusion. We have had no shortage of volunteers and in kind support to the value of around $50,000!

We meet as a group monthly for working bees and meetings, always followed by a shared meal or snack. We hope to have communal cooking sessions when our crops start producing surplus and establish a food and seed bank.

The bigger picture in our park is to host a monthly farmers market to encourage eating/buying produce locally as well as having the opportunity to expand our food forest and personal allotments if necessary.

This is part of our transitional town plan that we are working on.

Project Duration & Schedule:

Click for full view of design plan

In June 2006, Sam Smith put the word out to see if anyone wanted to help create a permaculture community garden, in the next 12 months we facilitated a community consultation process, ran community awareness and climate change seminars, fundraised/ wrote grants, located and procured a council owned site, ran intro to PC workshops and through this process designed the site. We also wrote a business plan out lining a 3 year infrastructure plan which was presented to the City of Greater Geelong who committed 2 years of $20,000 p/year to help establish our infrastructure which includes a meeting room (roof for rainwater harvesting), 2 x 35,000 litre water tanks and a composting toilet. We are in the process of implementing these items.

Stage one included the earthworks, food forest, communal mandala, personal allotments and the building and tanks. Stage 2 (current) the ramp, skillions, poly house and composting toilet.

In our first 12 months we ran several very successful fundraisers including the “art fence” campaign which help fund a rabbit proof fence around the site and set up a local artists register to create a community mural to decorate the fence (still underway). We also ran an “adopt a fruit tree campaign” which established a 40 fruit tree food forest and provided funds (along with a great amount of inkind labour and support by all parts of the community) to establish our access paths/driveway and a simple berm and swale which effectively waters our fruit trees.

We also allocated and built 14 personal allotments and a 12m diameter communal mandala garden. We have also started the ball rolling with the establishment of the school kitchen garden and Permaculture classes interwoven with the school curriculum. We officially opened our site in March 2008.

In the past 6 months we have been involved in the Roberto Perez tour, a David Holmgren Peak Oil seminar, gardening and working on permits for the rest of our infrastructure, we plan to have completed stage 2 by our first birthday party in March 2009.

Stage 3 includes organising our solar power, a pizza oven, outside kitchen, storage sheds, seed and food bank and farmers market arena with community meeting space (including a sculptural fire circle that also caters for bands and performers). We have also stirred up so much interest that we are inundated with artists and community groups like Rotary, Lions, Green Corps, CVA, Landcare, Baysa youth (disadvantaged youth), work for the dole… wanting to participate!

Once stage 3 is complete we would like to turn our attentions to education and community works…..

So many projects, so many volunteers, so many great ideas, so little time!

Project Needs

We have a passionate volunteer group of informed people and trained PC leaders. As far as we know we have facilitated the quickest community garden setup that we know of from concept to operable.

This has been done completely by volunteers, primarily by myself, Sam Smith (whilst on maternity leave), Ralph Cotter and Faye Connors. We now have a committee of 12 dedicated individuals and a member base of around 60. We have complete support of the greater community and all Barwon Heads community and sporting groups. We are the only local group that has crossed age, ability and cultural barriers.

Our problem is my time is limited and whilst the garden and projects are ticking along nicely it is becoming exhausting to co-ordinate the stake holder groups and all of the other activities involved running the garden and planning events.

We have several trained PC people in our group and our member base and greater community is keen for more training but again we are time poor to organise these events.

The coordination of this project to date has been relatively seemless and we have documented the process in both written form and film but is taking at least 15-20 hours a week plus our weekend working bees.

Although Australia and indeed the region we are in is considered wealthy compared to most of the other fabulous projects listed on the website we still feel it is critical to “re-educate” the community in our effort to reduce the impact of our carbon footprint. Western societies are using most of the resources and creating most of the pollution, it seems we are most in need of Permaculture education and sustainable lifestyle changes to reduce our planetary impact.

We are sadly hooked on fossil fuel use and creation of wealth to live our unsustainable lifestyles surrounded by all our land fill fashion and very important motor vehicles, tvs and other great “stuff”, meanwhile our communities and indeed societies are becoming dysfunctional and losing knowledge- like how to grow food. Like the melting polar ice, this knowledge loss is also accelerating. As an education tool and community capacity building program this project could be huge but we need a paid dedicated coordinators position 2-3 days/ week until it is financially self supporting.

This is our real project need!

Other Info:

Sam Smith is a Permatect (Permaculture- Architect) with a Permaculture diploma (Architecture and Community Development) who did her PDC with Bill Mollison in 1998, a year later “on-ground” training with Geoff Lawton. After establishing Zoomorph - a strawbale and eco house practise, in 2000, she worked as part of the PRI team on the Cegrane project in Macedonia, followed by some forest rehabilitation in Canada and some volunteer work in Guatemala with her partner Ralph Cotter, also trained by Bill Mollison and Geoff Lawton. Ralph was an integral part of the establishment of the Permaforest Trust in northern NSW who went on and did the training courses for the Accredited Permaculture Training and now works as a Land care Facilitator for the Department of Primary Industries. Recently they have both completed David Holmgren’s Advanced Principles Course and are involved in teaching Permaculture principles at local community gardens and neighbourhood houses. Sam also tutors “Permaculture and Sustainable Design methods” and “Architecture and Aid” to Deakin University Architecture students. They are in the process of establishing a small business eco-retrofitting and delivering “permatecure solutions”.