AFSA Member and tireless advocate for community gardening, Russ Grayson: IT WAS A WARM Sydney morning at the end of a warm autumn there in that inner urban community garden where I sat in conversation as a young female student questioned me about community food gardens and local government. Her need was to produce research for her university studies, her PhD, but for me it was the opportunity to think about just how far the practice of community gardening has come this past decade. Community gardening — its a component of urban agriculture—the practice of growing food in the city that encompasses the full range of scale from backyard home garden to commercial market garden. Community gardening is something else, too — it is a component within the emerging fair food or local food movement that is now becoming self-conscious around the country. Im convinced were going to hear more of this social movement. Community gardening is now seen as a valid urban landuse, and that was something the Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network set out to do in the early years of this new century. For that, it is mission accomplished though there remain pockets of fading resistance here and there across the country with the odd recalcitrant council, state government landholder, institution, or, sometimes, misguided or selfish citizen. With these, the Network is always ready to talk. Despite this growth and acceptance, community garden advocates and educators find they have to continually explain the facts about community gardens and the motivations of those that cultivate them. Heres another of my attempts, this one published in the online Open Forum:
Posted on: Tue, 27 May 2014 11:56:39 +0000
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