Page 644 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 9 March 2011
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Ms Le Couteur has observed too that the Canberra Organic Growers Society has worked with the government to establish 12 community gardens and, through that, it has provided many Canberrans with the opportunity to access a plot. Other individuals, as I mentioned, and groups have moved independently of the Canberra organic growers to work with the Department of Territory and Municipal Services, ACT Housing and the Department of Education and Training on community gardens in areas that those agencies administer.
While there are certainly always ways that things can be made easier for people wishing to set up a community gardening plot within the ACT, the story and present reality of community gardens in the ACT is, I believe, overall a very positive one. The government does recognise—and recognises quite fully or implicitly—the contribution that community gardens make to the liveability of our city, particularly in relation to all of those benefits which gardening brings.
The government supports the establishment of new community gardens and has done so for many years. Beyond facilitating licence arrangements to use land, the government has and continues to directly support the establishment of new community gardens. A number of the well-established gardens that exist today—for example, the Narrabundah community garden—have been established with direct ACT government financial support. A number of existing funding programs continue to support community gardens.
Many existing community gardens operate either on unleased territory land that is managed by the department, by the territory, or within public housing estates. The seven district gardens on TAMS land are managed by means of licences. The district gardens are at Weston Creek—I am sure members will have driven past all of these gardens from time to time—Holder, Kambah, Charnwood, Belconnen, Mitchell and Oaks Estate.
As I said, other community gardens exist within schools as an initiative of the school community. Indeed, I have recently had dealings with the community that manages the garden at the Kaleen high school. They have had some issues with vandalism. The government has just recently funded a new, hopefully vandal-proof, fence at the Kaleen community garden at the Kaleen high school.
Currently community gardens on land managed by TAMS operate under a licence agreement with the Canberra Organic Growers Society. However, I note the advice from COGS that it is undergoing an internal review of its operations as its volunteers are stretched to manage the 11 gardens it currently maintains. I acknowledge the wonderful job that COGS has done. COGS has demonstrated the capacity for a community organisation to coordinate community gardens that is replicated in other jurisdictions, a partnership model that I believe is the best approach to achieve an expansion of community gardens in the ACT.
COGS has shown a rigorous process for accepting member groups to ensure that it does not end up with unused or underutilised gardens that might need to be maintained at the expense of the general membership. Under current licence conditions, an unused site that is unlikely to be resurrected needs to be reinstated to
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