So much grass

We've been cutting the grass for 2 weekends (we being mum, grandpa, uncles, my boyfriend and me) and it STILL isn't done. The grass is just so long and dense, it's beaten 3 lawn mowers and 2 whipper snippers and it's still going strong.

But it it's come a long way from this:

Mulberry Gardens

 

 

Mulberry Gardens on the interwebs

My local community garden is on glenroy rd, next to glenroy college, a place called Mulberry Gardens. The atmosphere is great, with a multicultural collection of volunteers, both young and old, keeping the garden beautiful and teaching the community about self-sustainability and food production in the garden.
Mulberry gardens also facilitates a food swap on the 3rd saturday of every month. I brought in a bag of apples from my grandmothers apple tree and left with heaps of beans, a jar of green tomato relish (so tasty) a few zuchinnis and a lot of pear-shaped yellow tomatoes didn't make it home cause they were so tasty, and a great zuchini quiche thing that one of the volunteers mum cooked for us all.
I love just walking through the relatively small space and appreciating what it has become, a few years ago the grounds were used as a car park, with the entire terrain covered in asphalt. The gardens have come a long way since then, in March I helped plant the new orchard and now the angelica plum tree is the 'Cat's angelica plum tree',

You can't really see here, but one of those living sticks is the tree I planted! Having once been a carpark, the soil was really compacted and clay-like, so all the planting done was no small feat.

With the very little funding the garden receives, the community's participation is really important to the garden. I also believe that the garden is really important to the community, it is a place where people come to learn, children play and people with little to no english can share a common interest with their neighbours. The garden has created a sense of community in a once unfriendly, almost hostile neighbourhood.

Here's a plan of the garden, better showing it's layout.

This garden plan was drawn up by the commitee in 2009, so there have been some changes in plantings, but the location of the beds and buildings is still the same.