Excursion to St. Helens Community Garden in Glebe

At the Seed Saver workshop we had met two people from St. Helens community garden in Glebe who invited us to come to one of their next working bees and have a look around.

So on Sunday the following week Carrie, Markus and I went to Glebe and had a chat to their coordinators and a few of their members about their experiences in running the garden and compost, managing crops and dealing with issues like vandalism and theft.

Their garden is fairly big and spacious and next to the Glebe library and comprises of a more public and a more hidden part as well as a big shed, about 10 worm farms and 12 compost bins of which two are open to the public.

The more public area of the garden

The more private part (the "Secret Garden")

The worm farms

The compost bins

They also have a number of small and bigger wicking beds and they discussed the various pros and cons of those.

 

It was very interesting to see how they manage the gardens and how big the turnout was at the working bee, especially since they run a working be every Sunday morning and in summer also one additional time during the week.

There is always something that gets planted, harvested, watered, pruned, sown.

Ginger harvest

It was also interesting to hear how they deal with vandalism and theft, mostly because they hardly have that problem at all. They occasionally have plants over-harvested. But hardly any issue otherwise with vandalism.
They are partially using signs to identify plants as educational means. Partially they now refrain from doing so as to not encourage people that are not members to harvest them.

Overall it was exciting to see how well their garden works and how many people of all age groups attended.