Sowing the seeds to food security

COMMUNITY gardening is growing, with many groups being encouraged to start their own gardens.

Organisations were invited to share and learn about the possibility of more local gardening and produce, last week at PepperGreen Farm.

Kalianna School, who have been successfully operating a community garden for several years, helped run the event, hoping to inspire other groups about the benefits of homegrown fruit and veggies.

VCAL teacher Rob Brown said he’s very impressed with how quickly the community has got on board with community gardens.

“The original idea was for me to get five or six local schools involved in improving their school gardens and looking at the curriculum you can address in a school garden,” he said.

“Most of our students have little veggie gardens of their own now it’s just showing a lot of other people that with the right resources and people around you all you need is a little bit of hard work and you can do really amazing things.”

Students of Kalianna do all the work in the garden, which Mr Brown said is great experience.

“Students design the garden, build the garden bed, do the compost, seed propagation, mulching, build the greenhouse,” he said.

“One of our year 12 students probably runs the program more than I do.

“We use recycled pallets, tyres for beds, we basically try and keep the cost down as much as possible.”

Rob partnered with council initiative Healthy Greater Bendigo, a major supporter of community gardens, who also partner with Bendigo Foodshare to deliver fresh produce across Central Victoria.,

Statistics show 15 per cent of Australians will experience food insecurity over 12 months.

Executive officer of Healthy Greater Bendigo Amy Brown said self-sufficient gardens are key to improving food security.

“The type of people we’ve got at this event today have settings where they might be able to grow food and either distribute to their local community or send it to Foodshare to send it out to those in need,” she said.

Schools, early learning centres, neighbourhood houses, libraries, Scout groups and other volunteer groups are all encouraged to build their own gardens.

Mr Brown said Kalianna’s garden is proof that cost-efficient, easy and sustainable veggie farming in community groups is possible.

“Most people don’t have the money to build amazing looking garden beds and greenhouses with watering systems, and ours doesn’t look like that it’s just really functional,” he said.