18/04/2023
All hands on deck today! Garlic round two sown, more brassicas planted out, continued tomato harvest and of course the morning tea together!
Bundanoon Community Garden
- Home
- Australia
- Bundanoon, NSW
- Bundanoon Community Garden
We are a communal garden with dedicated and hardworking members who grow, cook, and eat the best orga Or for grandparents to come with the grandkids.
Five good reasons for joining a community garden
What attracts people to form and join a community garden, and what motivates individuals to stay with it and commit their time and energy week in, week out through rain and shine? Talking to new joiners tells us that there are at least five good reasons for a community garden, that every individual comes with their own unique blend of those five ‘m
otivators’, and (happily) that there is room for all combinations to co-exist and complement each other. For simplicity, we talk of the five ‘p’s: produce, process, people, place, and politics. Produce
Community gardens provide easy access to fresh, seasonal, nutritious food that is grown without chemicals, and is ecologically diverse (including local and heirloom varieties that will never be product-ised by industrialised agriculture) and this attracts "green-thumb foodies" who want to produce their food and not just consume it. Process
One thing we noticed immediately was that some people who joined the garden had their own veggie patches and fruit trees and so already had access to excellent produce. Why then join a community garden if you have your own garden to tend and harvest? In a word, because the process of communal gardening adds a whole relational dimension which is not available anywhere else. At the heart of this process is a sense of enjoyment of an expansive possibility space: growing more varieties than at home, learning more from others than you could ever learn from books and DVDs, finding new solutions to common problems. One thing you notice immediately is that people tend to be humble and self-effacing about their skills and yet it quickly becomes clear that they know a lot about many aspects of gardening and manage to teach and guide others who are less knowledgeable without fuss and fanfare. They are the natural leaders who go first and everyone learns by doing things with them and alongside them. Such leadership and learning is lost when it is restricted to the home garden. People
There are those who actually have much less interest in the produce itself, and the process, than in the people dimension. For them, it is more about the collegiality and conviviality of shared labour in pursuit of common goals. The garden is an occasion for easy friendship, gentle conversation, the joy of sitting together during a spell and looking out at the fruits of their work together. For example, the early indicators are that the garden is a great place for young mums and their preschool kids to meet up and hang out together. Place ( and space)
A community garden is a new kind of space that gives people access to a new and more rewarding sense of place. The garden is a third place, neither home nor work-based, where we come together voluntarily, informally, on egalitarian terms, with others who may initially be “strangers”, and engage in a joint venture which is truly self-organising. In short, the garden is a free and democratic space where people from all walks of life, all ‘demographics’, learn to collaborate and co-create together without bureaucratic organisation and decision making structures being needed. To organise and govern a communal local place and have it be productive of good food in turn opens up possibilities for the place to serve community life in many other ways too. For example, different community groups might come and use the garden as a natural gathering place with access to veggies and herbs and eggs combined and cooked in a wood-fired pizza oven. Or attend local classes on cooking, food preserving, bread making, medicinal herbs and so on. Or perhaps just to enjoy the art and aesthetics of the space itself. Politics
Community gardens ‘play’ at the level at which politics can never be a dirty word. At this local and communal level, politics is a natural, and even unconscious, expression of shared values and interests in making the world one lives in a better and more beautiful and more resilient place. As David Suzuki remarked on the practice of permaculture, which underpins many community gardens: “What [they] are doing is the most important activity that any group is doing on the planet. We don't know what details of a truly sustainable future are going to be like, but we need options, we need people experimenting in all kinds of ways and [they] are one of the critical gangs that are doing that." Many people would not associate community gardens with politics, and especially not with radical politics, but it is interesting how ‘alternative’ and disruptive such practices can be of the current global political economy. For example, in a search for 50 new radicals in the UK, five of the fifty came from community garden or food-related projects (see: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2012/feb/18/50-new-radicals-britain-nesta). One project, Incredible Edible, in Todmorton in Yorkshire, found radical new ways to put unused public land to productive use in delivering free food ( see: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2012/feb/18/50-new-radicals-incredible-edible). We are coming to understand that people come to community gardening with their own personal mix of the five ‘p’s and that no two people are alike, and that diversity of motivation and attraction is a good thing. What we don’t know yet, but suspect to be true, is that when all five ‘p’s are strongly represented and expressed in the community body as a whole, the garden is more likely to be successful and more resilient in the long term. There is something very basic and inherently good about growing your own food: to work and live within the Earth’s cycles is deeply satisfying. Yet many of our deepest longings and best intentions can wither on the vine when we tackle them in isolation. People are now re-discovering the pleasure of food gardening together. A community garden is often seen simply in terms of the production of local fruit and vegetables – an admirable goal in itself in the face of rising fresh food and fuel prices. However much more is grown in the community garden than fresh produce. The richness of our lives it seems depends on what we choose to surround ourselves with – and more of us now understand that an abundance of fresh, healthy food, being engaged in meaningful activities, with a group of people, a sense of place in a strong and resilient community makes us wealthy indeed. The Community Garden is proving to be a real treasure as a place where health, creativity, and hope for a positive sustainable future will flourish. It is a place where people across a wide range of ages can come together on common ground and with common interests, to work, learn, laugh, share skills and the harvest. Tony Coyle and Sandra Menteith, 2012
11/04/2023
Garlic Planting day!! Over 500 cloves of Aussie Red planted today, and more to go in the ground next week!
07/04/2023
One of our Bundanoon Community Gardeners is visiting Sophie's Patch this Easter weekend, with her Mum. Such a beautiful place and we are looking forward to a story or two when she comes back.
29/03/2023
Gday Folks! As you probably are aware we have now started work at our new community garden site in Bundanoon, and because we are transitioning to the new site there will be no offical gardening activities for a few weeks. We will post a notice about membership in a few weeks time when we are up and running from the Bundanoon site. So follow the page and when we open up for gardening at the new site we would love you to come along and check it out!
27/03/2023
THE NO-DIG RAISED BED WITH A DIFFERENCE
Hugelkultur, pronounced hoo-gul-culture, means hill culture or hill mound.
Instead of putting branches, leaves and grass clippings in bags by the curbside for the bin men… build a hugel bed. Simply mound logs, branches, leaves, grass clippings, straw, cardboard, petroleum-free newspaper, manure, compost or whatever other biomass you have available, top with soil and plant your veggies.
https://www.permaculture.co.uk/articles/the-many-benefits-of-hugelkultur
16/03/2023
BCG will be at the Lions Market at Ferndale on Saturday.
Looking forward to seeing you there. A sample of what we have for sale are these spaghetti squash.
Vegetable spaghetti is a member of the pumpkin family. Their raw pale-yellow flesh is firm, but on cooking magically the flesh falls away in ribbon-like strands that like similar to spaghetti.
Good fun.
05/03/2023
01/03/2023
We grew this beautiful and bountiful spaghetti squash in the back garden of one of our members. Delicous baked with olive oil, salt and pepper!
09/02/2023
We did it! Day one of breaking the dirt at our new site. Lots more work to be done but we are a great team and we’ve had some amazing contributions from lots of people. Watch this space!
08/02/2023
Exciting news for Bundanoon Community Garden, breaking ground on their new site on Ellsmore Road tomorrow! 😊👍
07/02/2023
Had to share our harvest sharing, morning tea and blackberry stash!
06/02/2023
What a harvest! Hard work and teamwork pays off. This will be shared out between everyone who came today. Great work everyone!
26/01/2023
Summer in the patch
22/12/2022
The new site mowed courtessy of Peter Rocca. It looks great, thank you very much Peter. It won't be long and we will be more than just mowing.
13/12/2022
Tallong garden is looking great! This is just a small section of it.
13/12/2022
SOLD OUT thanks everyone for your support!!!! Hope to do this again next year!!
How good is this!!!! Bundanoon Community Gardeners are delighted with our crop of garlic and the process. We would like to thank Wylen House for assisting us with advice on all things garlic, our friends and Tallong farm hosts for the ongoing use of their land. Monies raised will be used in the development of our new site in Bundanoon. 😍
13/12/2022
SOLD OUT!!! Thanks for your support!!
12/12/2022
SOLD OUT!!! Braids will be for sale from Tomorrow
12/12/2022
SOLD out of bagged garlic! Braided bulbs will be for sale from tomorrow
28/11/2022
Watch this space:!
Bundanoon Community Garden are delighted to announce that we have been granted a lease from the Wingecarribee Council to operate our garden on a portion of Burgess Street Park. .
Works approval for Stage 1 has been granted by Wingecarribee Shire Council and BCG intend to commence levelling the block in February 2023
Community Gardeners in Bundanoon have been busily fund raising and are preparing to commence work in February 2023.
We are still gardening together at a member’s garden. Our garlic has been harvested, the tomatoes, beans, corn pumpkin, and lots of other summer veges are growing well.
There are a number of stakeholders invested in this project, not least BCG members and the Bundanoon and surrounding communities, Wingecarribee Council, Sponsors, and Supporters
We would like to recognise, Veolia Mulwaree Trust , Royal Botanic Garden Sydney (Sowing Seeds of Hope – Community Greening Program) The Good Yarn, Bundanoon, B Colquhoun, The Bundanoon Club, Coles Moss Vale.
Thank you very much for your ongoing support Jill Cockram, Jo O’Brien and other Community Gardeners.
It is a Community effort and feels good!!!
08/11/2022
We have some seedlings and plants for sale at the farm stall in Tallong, fundraising for our new ”forever home” here in Bundanoon.
Plants are $2 (or three for $5). There are tomato seedlings, herbs, sprouting broccoli and plants to attract pollinators to your garden!
08/11/2022
Beautiful day for gardening and sharing with friends…
03/11/2022
I am sure it was a great day at Moss Vale Community Garden. I just love the photos and appreciate the recipe. Next year let's hope we can do this in Bunndanoon at our new Community Garden site.
01/11/2022
Don't the flowers look stunning?? This will be a delicious session, there is something very special about elder flower champagne
This Thursday morning, 3rd November, 2022 there will be a demo on making Elderflower champagne at the Community Gardens.
It's a flavoursome, sparkling drink enjoyed during the festive season and its so simple to create! Come along and learn the art of making your festive beverages.
29/10/2022
Come along to Mittagong bunnnings NOW for lunch! Bundanoon community garden fundraiser sausage sizzle!!
18/10/2022
A productive day in the patch, potting up tomatoes ready to sell in the next week or two, planting out corn, tommies, sowing beetroot, and HARVESTING! We have some seedlings at the Tallong site for sale, and more to come in the days/weeks ahead. Stay tuned for zucchini, tomatoes, cucumbers and flowers!
16/10/2022
What perfect weather for our fundraiser stall at the Bundanoon Lions Club Car Boot Sale! $450 profit toward creating our new permanent garden! Thanks to all who donated, the Lions Club and our lovely customers! We will have more veggie seedlings and other plants for sale throughout spring, keep following our page for more info!!
14/10/2022
We are excited to support the Lions Club Car Boot Sale this Sunday with our stall full of seedlings, books, bric a brac and other weird and wonderful things, to fundraise for our new "forever home" Come along and pick up a bargain!
07/10/2022
Somebody has to do it! Collecting cow poo to add to our compost is really valuable. Just look at the worms and the quality of the dirt underneath the cow pats. Strangely satisfying work! Good work kids!
14/09/2022
This is so good to see MVCG folk getting some valuable assistance from Bunnings. And enjoying morning tea from CWA so I am told. Great Community.
13/09/2022
A VERY productive morning to day. We had people potting up and germinating seeds (in our new poly tunnel), others were digging in green manure, collecting cow poo for the compost, harvesting leeks, kale, lettuce and snow peas. And there’s so much more to come, including some seeds we planted last week just coming through and we can’t recall what we’ve planted! That will be a nice surprise! Followed of course by our infamous morning teas.
30/08/2022
Productive indoor meeting today discussing the new site at Bundanoon! We have some very knowledgeable and helpful new members which we’re all very grateful for. Morning tea A1 as usual.
11/08/2022
Tuesdays together in the BCG garden!
11/08/2022
Tallong is looking just fantastic at the moment. The morning teas are not bad either!
22/02/2022
It was a hive of garlic activity at todays community garden meet. Yes we still meet in the rain!
14/02/2022
Well we certainly earned our delicious morning tea today!
07/12/2021
A big thanks to mount murray nursery for donating a load of seedlings to us. They won’t go to waste!
02/11/2021
Lovely morning gardening. Great company, chats, harvesting and morning tea. Thankyou lovely people x
12/10/2021
We’re back!!!
12/10/2021
We are back despite the rain! It was so lovely to be back gardening with friends today. Mostly weeding today but we did harvest some beetroot, parsnips, cauli and silver beet. Jees I missed those morning teas!
Address
Bundanoon, NSW
2578
Website
Alerts
Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Bundanoon Community Garden posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.
Contact The Business
Send a message to Bundanoon Community Garden:
Videos
Flying oven
Time lapse of first part of COLA construction: brief but good!
Shortcuts
Share
Category
Comments
A productive day in the patch, potting up tomatoes ready to sell in the next week or two, planting out corn, tommies, sowing beetroot, and HARVESTING! We have some seedlings at the Tallong site for sale, and more to come in the days/weeks ahead. Stay tuned for zucchini, tomatoes, cucumbers and flowers!
What perfect weather for our fundraiser stall at the Bundanoon Lions Club Car Boot Sale! $450 profit toward creating our new permanent garden! Thanks to all who donated, the Lions Club and our lovely customers! We will have more veggie seedlings and other plants for sale throughout spring, keep following our page for more info!!
We are excited to support the Lions Club Car Boot Sale this Sunday with our stall full of seedlings, books, bric a brac and other weird and wonderful things, to fundraise for our new "forever home" Come along and pick up a bargain!
Somebody has to do it! Collecting cow poo to add to our compost is really valuable. Just look at the worms and the quality of the dirt underneath the cow pats. Strangely satisfying work! Good work kids!
This is so good to see MVCG folk getting some valuable assistance from Bunnings. And enjoying morning tea from CWA so I am told. Great Community.
A VERY productive morning to day. We had people potting up and germinating seeds (in our new poly tunnel), others were digging in green manure, collecting cow poo for the compost, harvesting leeks, kale, lettuce and snow peas. And there’s so much more to come, including some seeds we planted last week just coming through and we can’t recall what we’ve planted! That will be a nice surprise! Followed of course by our infamous morning teas.
Productive indoor meeting today discussing the new site at Bundanoon! We have some very knowledgeable and helpful new members which we’re all very grateful for. Morning tea A1 as usual.
Tuesdays together in the BCG garden!
Tallong is looking just fantastic at the moment. The morning teas are not bad either!
It was a hive of garlic activity at todays community garden meet. Yes we still meet in the rain!
Well we certainly earned our delicious morning tea today!
A big thanks to mount murray nursery for donating a load of seedlings to us. They won’t go to waste!
Lovely morning gardening. Great company, chats, harvesting and morning tea. Thankyou lovely people x
We’re back!!!
We are back despite the rain! It was so lovely to be back gardening with friends today. Mostly weeding today but we did harvest some beetroot, parsnips, cauli and silver beet. Jees I missed those morning teas!
Well worth a listen.
#}