To be – or not to be? A critical community garden question

Like with many things currently, we are asking the question _ can the Community Garden continue as it is?

Over the past nine years the Community Garden has managed to provide produce to the Community Larder on a fairly regular basis. This has been due largely to the dedication of a small team of regular, committed gardeners with a team of summer waterers; some great occasional gardeners and partners of regular gardeners, who have who have been happy and willing to do some of the hard yakka. All who are much appreciated and welcomed. 

However, we are now in the situation where we have reached a crossroad with regard to people’s ability to commit: we have always hoped that we would somehow hand over to new gardeners, allowing the original gardeners a break to perhaps become those occasional gardeners rather than taking full responsibility for the entire growth cycle of crops, i.e: managing compost, seed raising, plant ordering, funding applications, harvesting and delivering, weeding, grass cutting etc. 

But, this has not eventuated _ so whereto from here ?

Does the Martinborough community support the garden or not? How can the community support the garden? The existing team would be keen to provide guidance and support to any enthusiastic newcomers – enthusiasm is key; expertise is welcome but not a key requirement.

Basically, we need gardeners and commitment.

Currently, we garden on a Wednesday morning, a day which works for current gardeners. Is this the best day? It is for the current gardeners, but this could change.

We currently have one gardener committed to creating our compost: this is great … but is there anyone out there who might be committed to care for just one aspect of the Garden? ‘Just kumara’; ‘just brassicas’; ‘just seed raising’ etc? 

This could be done on an hourly commitment basis, e.g. 4/5 hours per month.

There are a number of other issues we are exploring to keep the garden alive, but they all depend on whether or not we are able to sustain the basic concept of the garden with input from gardeners. Increased signage, advertising for real estate agent info packs, relocation of distribution points etc. seem a little pointless if the real option has to be to face up to the fact that the garden has done its time and needs to be wound up.

If you have thoughts you would like to share about the garden’s future, you can:

** call into the garden at 51 Oxford St between 10:00 – 11:00 a.m. any Wednesday morning;

** provide feedback via our Facebook page: Martinborough Community Garden;

** deposit your feedback in the “MCG Feedback” box at the Medical Centre;

** email: martinboroughgarden@gmail.com