There is a local community garden in the north of Katoomba.
It is a ‘loose’ informal cooperative which tends to run consensus decision making for the larger issues and more of an ‘any help is good’ scheme for the every day maintenance. It is on land provided by the Local Council and up till now has operated on a widely interpreted concept of organic farming with a big focus on longer term planting and a smaller space for general herb and food plants to be grown. Essentially at the moment it is more like an open parkland with some areas of focus, rather than a strictly organised farm for growing food and or flowers. There are both some good and bad structural features and developments within the bounds of the gardens.
Since January 2011 I’ve started to participate and help out by maintaining and improve existing garden areas and landscaping and planting out some new spaces. There are some great established ‘backbone’ elements to the gardens and there are some neglected existing garden spaces that just need a bit of attention. The gardens were established around 1992+ so they have been going a while now and obviously interest and participation has waxed and wained. I became aware of them not long after they were started through research in a work project but had neither the time or energy to participate till this year.
The new spaces that I have been working on are designed to follow a very broad permaculture style layout and conceptual pathway that was already planned to some extent by people involved with the gardens for some time. But I have been trying to:
- Create some focussed productive growing areas for food only crops
- Plant more and regular food production crops
- Plant a wider range of cold climate crop foods that are adapted for the local area and seasons
- Adapt the landscape to be be more productive but also be entertaining aesthetically
- Have fun and get some exercise
- Plant and grow enough food so that it compliments what I am already growing at other locations and allows for round the year supplies
- Plant things that I do not have enough space for elsewhere
The gardens have a website and the people involved with the gardens are connected with the wider networks in Australia for community gardens and permaculture. They are generally an interesting bunch of people…
