Looking for Comunity Gardens Research

Northey Street City Farm in Brisbane Australia has been operating since 1994. I am sure they could provide you with advice on their approach to this issue, which I am also sure would be very positive and inclusive. Go to http://www.northeystreetcityfarm.org.au/education.htm, bearing in mind that we have recently experienced heavy flooding and they were 2M under water so a response to you may not be their immediate priority.

Rhonda Scoullar
Queensland Natural Resources and Water
Australia

Mornington peninsula health
www.participateinhealth.org.au/clearinghouse/Docs/peninsulahealthcacpresentation.ppt

http://www.organicfooddirectory.com.au/general-issues/community-food-systems/community-gardens.html



Russell  Anderson
Australia

Thank you everybody for such great links and advice! I'm going to copy a bunch of it and share it with the campus dean to work on the issues together. This info will be quite invaluable.
My sincere appreciation!
Arnica

Arnica Rowan
Cross Country Consultants
Canada
www.crosscountryconsultants.ca

Hi Arnica,

Have a look at a great report made on a community garden in Sydney at a housing estate. They have commented on issues of vandalism: http://www.housing.nsw.gov.au/NR/rdonlyres/546938ED-F0E9-433F-9861-3093F11664E6/0/ABountifulHarvest.pdf

Also the University of New South Wales have set up a fantastic community garden which has been going for quite some time, have a visit at: http://www.communitygarden.org.au/experience/gardens/unsw.html

Hope that helps!

Warm regards,

Sophie Golding
Community Engagement Officer
Power and water
Australia

Hi Arnica, I have been involved in establishing community gardens & maintaining them, here in Hamilton New Zealand. One garden has now been operating successfully for 8years. I agree with other comments that fencing the garden & locking it only intices the challenge to get in. Our garden is completly open to the public, there is a little vandalism but nothing serious. Unfortunately some people do help themselves to the produce which is a dissappointment to the volunteers who take the produce home. If you want to put in a lot of gardens you will need to have people on board to work them as you will find they will become neglected & untidy & you create a bad image for community gardens. Com gardens do not look like the well tended home garden as there are various imputs & ideas so one must expect a difference in the appearance. This can be a good thing as the variety of people allows for more creativity. Its a good idea to get other groups involved to share the load in sourcing people & funding.

Cheryl Noble
Project coordinator
Hamilton Permaculture Trust
New Zealand

Hi Arnica, Try searching on web http://taroona.tas.au/neighbourhood-garden.

this is a small suburban garden in hobart, tasmania and has been establishing over the past two years. I reckon they will have some good handson practical tips on setting up a garden from scratch including how they have dealt with potential vandalism, untidyness etc.

Kind regards,
Tess McNeill

Tess McNeill
Fishcare Volunteer Coordinator-South
Department of Primary Industries and Water
Australia
www.dpiw.tas.gov.au

Hello Arnica,

From my experience I also agree with Cathie about not having the gardens locked up. This puts the responsibility on all the community to look after the gardens and shows that the garden will produce food for everybody to enjoy. That said, when I was working with a community garden that was near a council housing settlement we discovered that a lot of, ah produce misplacement was taking place.

To combat this we confused the unauthorized pickers by planting exotic heritage varieties in the areas most visible when walking past. A juicy ripe red tomato is tempting, but to the uneducated eye, an equally delicious yellow or black tomato just looks off. The same goes for purple broccoli and orange spinach.

It sounds a little harsh as community gardens are for all the community. But it helped reduce casual and pre harvest picking by as much as 80%. This allowed more quality produce to be shared amongst hard working members, their families and the local community.

With good social inclusion campaigns and signage, vandalism should be low and manageable for your campus. But being clever with psychological strategies like; no gate, and weird looking food can also help reduce the culture for community garden abuse.

Regards,
Candice


Candice Laidlaw Thompson
Sustainability Awareness Projects Officer
Toowoomba Regional Council
Australia

HI Arnica,

There is an environmental dorm group at San Francisco State University that started a small edible garden near there res hall. You may want to contact that group at [email protected]. I know, working in Facilities, we looked at that garden as a test case for the larger campus.

Stanford University also has a community farm that is quite successful. You can find out more information on their website http://www.stanford.edu/group/scfarm/

I hope this helps.

Chao,

Will Rutledge

William Rutledge
Sustainability Assistant
Stanford School of Medicine OFPM

I helped establish a community garden in El Monte. We have very little vandelism considering we are in a moderate crime area. The police department partnered up with us to provide us with grafetti removal. We made sure we had plenty of lighting and no front gate. We subscribe to the idea that if we lock it up, it is more enticing to break in. You can see pictures at http://www.diynetwork.com/diy/shows_dgfi/episode/0,2046,DIY_19139_50607,00.html
and
http://www.diynetwork.com/diy/shows_dgfi/episode/0,2046,DIY_19139_50608,00.html

feel free to email me if you have other questions [email protected]



Cathie Chavez
City of Los Angeles
United States

Hi there
I just attended a conference from the transitiontown.org movement. It's taking on all over the world (in specific, I am based in Ireland so I was at the irish gathering). Community gardens are key to the development of each TT, hence there were many examples of them and strategies to deal with vandalism (i.e. we had a focus group on CG and the lady running it, based in Wicklow, Ireland, had loads of advice). The key to success is the social inclusion approahc (which is among the objective of TT) through which different ways are found to "communicate" with vandals and eventually get their respect.

If you are interested in talking directly to her, come back to me at [email protected] and I will forward her email (can't find it now)

All the best

Barbara Tomasella
Vipre ireland
Ireland

Try contacting the North Shore Neighbourhood House in North Vancouver...http://www.nsnh.bc.ca/
They have a community garden, it's not locked, and anyone can access it. In walking through it recently, vandalism does not appear to be a concern. Good luck!

Karen Morton
Info Analyst
Spectra Energy
Canada

visit busseltoncommunitygarden.org.au for a community garden project that's now about 18 months old and progressing very well. It's located in the south west corner of Western Australia and has had limited but essential support from the local government body which has made the land available for this use.

Bernie Masters
environmental consultant
Australia