“It’s learning with other people that’s one of the big pluses for the community garden and enjoying what we grow,” says Sue, from Thornleigh Community Garden.
“If you’ve got space and a keenness, you can do a community garden anywhere.”
In Part 1 and 2 of this Helping Hands documentary, we meet Sue and her team of enthusiastic gardening volunteers at their community garden in Thornleigh, a suburb of northern Sydney, to find out how one person’s transition to retirement has transformed an ordinary suburban backyard into a great initiative welcoming locals of all ages and abilities.
“Our actual tagline,” explains Sue, “is growing food and friendships.” Thornleigh Community Garden is an opportunity “to reach out to the community and help other people learn about gardening and plants and sustainability … you don’t have to be an expert.”
Founded in June 2017, Thornleigh Community Garden was borne out of Sue’s desire to bring a new purpose and productivity to her recent retirement from full-time paid work. Since then, the garden’s purpose, popularity and productivity have steadily grown.
Karen has been on the journey with Sue since the very beginning. She is one of a small group of dedicated volunteers who love to support this humble garden project. They willingly turn up each week both for the work in the garden and the friendships that flourish there. One of the things Karen loves most is how much she’s learned about sustainability.
“We try to be as sustainable as possible. Sustainability and reusability are really important to us. We try and recycle and reuse as much as we can.”
Karen goes on to explain sustainability measures garden members implement while showing the worm farms, whose castings feed the plants, and the rain tanks which keep the gardens watered. Garden members proudly share that they’ve never once had to use water from the local water supply to keep the garden at its best.
Thornleigh Community Garden reaps benefits for its members from the hard work they put into it, and just as importantly, from the friendships they enjoy each time they gather. A morning’s hard work always ends with a much-anticipated morning tea on the verandah, sponsored by the donations of delicious treats in turn by its members.
For young mum, Michelle, and her son Lance, relatively new members of only five months so far, the garden is a place to not only enjoy learning something new, but to spend valuable time bonding as mother and son over a shared experience, and to broaden their network of friendships with others in their local community they may otherwise never have met.
“I think it’s important for kids to learn where fruit and vegetables come from, and I’ve learned a lot of things from interacting with other people who have the same interest in gardening that I do,” Michelle says. “He (Lance) enjoys coming here as well. He’s met lots of wonderful people.”
The garden also hosts a fortnightly group of dementia sufferers, their carers and others in the community who are isolated. For them, meandering through the garden and reminiscing in the greenhouse provides respite from a stressful world and is often a catalyst for sharing happy memories prompted by familiar garden plants.
For Sue, seeing the garden achieve such outcomes for its visitors is the reason why she started the project and also her motivation to carry on.
“We build each other up. And for people who are a little isolated, (the garden) is a place where they can come and just feel welcomed,” Sue says.
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