Neighbourhood-House Garden

Maintaining a Thriving Community Garden: A Lesson in Patience and Teamwork

BNH composting set-up

Maintaining a thriving garden in a community space is no easy feat. These gardens are often underfunded and rely heavily on volunteers to keep them going, usually with very limited resources.
Another challenge is the sheer number of people who come through a community house garden. These spaces host a variety of activities and programs, which means lots of guests, lots of foot traffic, and plenty of well-meaning visitors with their own ideas about how the garden should be used. Basically, even with consistent volunteers tending the beds, they might arrive to find that the lettuce they intentionally left to bolt for seed saving later in the season has been pulled up by a kind-hearted passerby and tossed into the compost bin (the wrong one, of course).

It’s a constant exercise in patience, clear communication, and in managing expectations.

A cared for garden

This term, I started working at Brunswick Neighbourhood House, facilitating their Grow It Yourself Gardening Course. When I first came to check out the space, I was pleasantly surprised to find a beautifully cared-for garden: lush, productive, and well-equipped, thanks to a regular, very dedicated volunteer who tends to it a few times a week.

My first thought was, this is going to make my job easy! 😄 My second was, how can we support this person and the space during our time here?

Teaching gardening and bringing therapeutic horticulture to community spaces is such a privilege. We get to share knowledge and stories, get our hands in the soil, and enjoy a sense of connection. But it comes with a question mark of continuity. The group brings an abundance of energy and helping hands for 10 weeks… and then the term ends. Leaving the volunteers to carry on regular maintenance.

For me, that means working in consultation with stakeholders. With top consideration being what would benefit them the most, and only taking on projects that will be sustainable for them to maintain once we’re no longer there to help.

So lush

Last week, during our session on soil composition and composting, and in preparation for the seasonal change, we took on the task of overhauling the garden's compost bins and redesign their composting system. The garden had two very full large bins and a half full/half broken tumbler, all of which hadn’t been tended to in a long time - which is so fair. Inheriting months (probably years) of unattended composting can be quite daunting task to tackle solo.

With eight sets of willing hands, we emptied, sifted, processed, and restarted the two large bins (the tumbler was emptied and decommissioned). In the process, we harvested three large bags—over 70 litres!—of gorgeous compost: fluffy, rich, mature, teeming with life, and ready to nourish the garden.
We relocated the bins to a more convenient corner, set up a dedicated spot for carbon collection nearby, and transplanted some Comfrey (a well-known compost activator) close to the bins. With fresh layers of carbon, nitrogen, and semi-decomposed compost full of microbes and life, one bin was closed to rest while the other was now ready to be filled.

Our next step is to streamline food-scraps collection process throughout the neighbourhood house. By creating a clear and simple system for staff and guests to follow, we hope to maximise organic waste collection and make life easier for the resident gardener- giving them more control over what goes into the bins, and when.

I look forward to experiencing this implementation over the next few weeks🌱🪱