Community grows as one
The Kingston Organic Community Garden was established in 2008 through a grant from Baptist Community Services. The grant was used to transform the disused tennis courts in the church grounds into a viable garden with a shed, water supply and garden beds.
Last year a book was published to celebrate the garden's first five years. At present there are nine community beds and 51 private plots, with produce from the community beds shared. Half goes to the local community and half to the gardeners.
The ACT government identified a need for a drop-in centre, where disadvantaged people could be helped with life skills. It approached three churches to help staff the centre, known as the The Verandah, on the ground floor of the Stuart flats in Griffith. Part of the activity was to provide food for the underprivileged including bread, tinned and dried foods, along with fresh fruit, herbs and vegetables.
A group from the Kingston community garden harvests produce on Tuesdays and Fridays. It is taken to The Verandah by Catherine Stafford from the Baptist church office and her father, David Stafford, who is co-ordinator for The Verandah.
THE GROWERS
Anna Sutherland keeps records of the crops that are weighed before delivery. The first three months of this year they have harvested 11 kilograms of zucchini, 21 kilos of French beans, 23 kilos of tomatoes and 27 kilos of cucumbers.
In Sutherland's own bountiful, no-dig plot, she grows huge Hungarian heart tomatoes, tromboncino zucchini, basil and pumpkins. She is also the green-tomato chutney queen.
An important inclusion in her section of the garden are bee-friendly plants, particularly cosmos, calendula, marigolds, sage, oregano and lavender. Butterflies also visit her plants.
Jean Willoughby of Barton has gardened all her life but now her growing is just for the community. She says the most prolific crop this year has been purple king beans and the raspberries have been marvellous. She looks after the large paper bags of saved seed, mostly harvested from the previous season's crops, and helped raise a massed plantation of lettuce seedlings that were shared with individual gardeners.
Willoughby says they don't use commercial sprays, choosing natural fungicides and insecticides such as diluted milk, gentle bicarbonate of soda and garlic spray. Recipes for all these sprays can be found on the Gardening Australia website.
Mandy Haley and Chris Craig are ''newbies'' at the community garden and they share a plot. Haley arrived in Kingston with her husband in 2012, when he came to work in Canberra, and says the community garden became a therapeutic place to water garden beds in the evening and listen to the birds. She has developed a new passion for a raised vegetable bed in her garden in England, to which she returns this month. In Kingston she mused about the pumpkins growing over a frame and up the the high-wire fence of the former tennis court. The fence helps keep out the local possums.
Chris Craig says the gardening group is giving Haley a posh morning tea of super goodies to farewell her. Craig grows globe artichokes and is also the pesto princess when the group gathers at Anna Sutherland's house for pesto-making sessions.
Sharon Blight, an enthusiastic long-standing member of the garden, shares a plot with Karina Campbell, who also gardens at home in Kingston and on a bush block at the coast. Campbell says the community gardeners are a good friendship group who celebrate birthdays with ''bubbles'' and harvest days with a thermos of coffee.
As we were leaving the site, four little children and two teachers from the adjoining Goodstart Early Learning Centre came to visit their bed, which is filled with sunflowers, beans, zucchini and a scarecrow.
>> Susan Parsons is a Canberra writer.