The Footscray Community Garden & Learning Place was started with a simple idea: a commitment to community connectedness & sustainability: we hoped to build-up community knowledge and skills in sustainable and equitable practices that can improve liveability.
Since August last year, a community committed to these ideals has collectively turned a rather neglected-looking space first into a construction site, and from there into a flourishing garden.
We renovated all the existing beds and converted the inherited raised beds to wicking beds – a huge undertaking that involved emptying them completely, installing the wicking technology and filling them back up with all the good things to help the veggies grow. These wicking beds have been a great success. Within six weeks, we were able to send our first two crates of produce to the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, and we’ve kept up our weekly delivery since, also adding three other food relief programs to our distribution.
We had four deluxe composting bays installed in January and, the greenhouse – which turned out to be a more complicated piece of engineering than the Eiffel Tower – has finally been completed and concreted into place. We held a mega Working Bee in February, with a great show of volunteers, and shifted and laid 12 cubic metres of toppings. We set-up a solar pump for the water tank, got two large outdoor tables built, and are now about to build the outdoor learning space.