No One in this Town Should Starve
The Northbank Community Garden in Bellingen is well established on land that used to be grazed by horses. Located at 100 Wheatley Street, food is grown communally for use by anyone that needs it. There is also a seedling nursery which sells open pollinated heritage vegetable seedlings. The proceeds of the nursery help to fund the garden.
Our Living Coast spoke with Peter and Marjorie Hawkins who are avid gardeners and also look after the chooks there. They shared with us the ups and downs of communal gardening.
“I had my little garden at home and I could grow things like lettuces and broccoli, all these 
smaller vegetables, but I couldn’t grow large amounts or larger vegetables like corn, potatoes, pumpkin, squash or anything like that,” said Peter about his initial motivation for checking out the garden. Now he enjoys that it is an organic garden and the social interaction with others. What “I like about the garden is that people can come in to a community garden where most gardeners are very open and they’re more into their garden than they are into politics and ego and so they can actually teach. Teach children and other adults how to garden. And it’s so easy and so simple.” He recognises that it can be daunting for new people but he found the others there so welcoming. Marjorie agrees it’s fun meeting new people.
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“I’m meeting a lot of younger people up there… A bit of laughter a little bit of playing around.” |
“You need gardening therapy”
Peter had an initial challenge transitioning to a more communal garden from his own back yard. He had to learn that people can come in and take a certain amount of what they want or some of his produce. “And for an old gardener that was a real learning curve…But they helped me and set up a row and said “Well that row is Peter’s” and then they sort of asked people to keep away from that so I could get used to the community concept of the garden.” Marjorie notes that some other community gardens have a system where you pay a certain amount of money and then you have a certain area to garden. She believes this might be the future of the Bellingen community gardens. However she also recognises the importance of the garden’s role where she says “No one in this town should starve”. Both Peter and Marjorie just hope that the community that benefits from the garden by gathering food, in turn, gives back by just doing even an hour of weeding a week.
“But the great thing is that if you were starving you could go up to the garden and get a feed” said Marjorie. “You know, the garden should never have a closed gate – it should always have that community base that anyone can walk in there and grab a feed and be involved in the garden,” adds Peter.
It’s a teaching area up there
Peter believes that for sustainability people should really start to learn how to grow their own vegetables and fruit and not to lose the knowledge. He expresses a desire to learn from older gardeners, of which there a lot around Bellingen, the techniques and how they’ve found things which would be so valuable for everyone.
Their longer term vision is to see the garden as an education centre and a place for tourists as one of the places to visit in town because it’s unique. That would be good for the town as well as the community garden. Eventually it would be good to have a teaching area there too.
Peter reflects that “As a kid we had a half acre vegetable garden for our large family. And I can remember being young in the veggie garden. So I don’t want my children or grandchildren or society to lose that because that’s sustainability.”
Vegetable driven
It all comes down to the gardening. For Peter: “I like the gardening – it’s good for me because I work 5 days a week and so I can actually have some downtime in the garden. And I find it very earthy to put my hands in the soil.”
For Marjorie: “For Peter and I it’s a fun thing to do together as a couple. We both like it. Every afternoon after work we go up there and take the dog and look after the chooks and Peter will do a bit around the garden. It is something that is family orientated.”
While these two grow nearly everything, their favourite vegetables include beetroot and trombone gramma. Marjorie 
makes homemade beetroot and pickles it in vinegar salt, pepper and sugar. The gramma is a sweet old fashioned pumpkin and if you’re lucky you can taste some of Peter’s community garden grown gramma in a sweet pie sometimes on the menu at the café Bean @ Bello.
Peter would really like to be able to involve more people in the community garden. “Because there is nothing like people getting to harvest their first lettuce they’ve grown or corn or whatever. I was shy but vegetable driven so once I felt I was on my own turf and then I was comfortable to ask.” In turn Peter is happy to meet people and take them through the garden on the weekend to learn about it and how they can get involved.
