Chapel Hill Community Garden, a rare piece of open land in the inner city of Brisbane, provides the area’s 10,000 residents an opportunity to come together to grow edible plants, learn new skills and build friendships.
The group began life in 2020 with a request to Brisbane City Council for use of a vacant site near the water reservoir. Council granted the request and duly cleared the land and laid a gravel base.
Today, the community garden has 204 Facebook members and a core group of 20-25 worker-members, from very young to over 80. These include working parents, students and retirees. Children are actively encouraged to participate in the monthly working bees while excess produce (of which there is lots!) is donated to a local charity – Communify – which distributes edible goods to 40 under-privileged families once a week.
Members are encouraged to visit the garden whenever they like, while working bees are held twice a month for about 2-3 hours a time (followed by a wind-down of lots of chats).
The Community Garden has been the grateful recipient of numerous grants and donations which have enabled it to increase its number of productive garden beds to 29 – these are a mixture of standard, drip-feed irrigation and self-watering wicking beds (to conserve water and reduce time spent on rostered watering duty).
One current project that is attracting lots of attention and many willing hands is the construction of a children’s garden containing 7 beds, a Teepee growing frame and a surrounding white picket fence. Plantings so far include strawberries, blueberries, a flower garden and sweet potato and herb gardens.
Here at JACK, we are excited by this community gardening project – it is doing so much good on so many fronts – and wanted to show our support. We have just supplied some fencing related products, such as Project Mesh, Netting Pliers, Ultraposts, Jute Netting and Flower Mesh, plus a collection of growing and protection products that include Crop and Vege Cages, Twistable Soft Ties and a Plant Protection Shade Tunnel. Hopefully these will all contribute to better gardens and more abundant crops at the Chapel Hill Community Garden.
We will bring you regular updates and images of the Chapel Hill Community Garden – and maybe it will inspire you to start your own community garden?
The regular working bees at Chapel Hill Community Garden see constant improvement throughout the garden.
Plant protection is vital, with the gardeners utilising netting, meshing and cages to ensure the wild life leaves plenty for the humans!
Development of the children’s garden continues, while propagation and planting gets into full swing with the arrival of Spring.
JACK Flower Mesh is used to deter Brush Turkeys (above) while JACK Vege Cages are used to support tomatoes… and Project Mesh Trellis is used for the Climbing Beans (right).
The newly planted passionfruit vines (above right) will benefit from the excellent support the same Project Mesh Trellis will provide.
And finally, the children’s garden at night!! Note the tepee in the background. Progress is being made!
Hot weather has brought a lot of the work at Chapel Hill Gardens to a standstill. Apart from regular watering and weeding, no new plantings will take place until the new year.
But there is a concerted ongoing effort into keeping pesky snails at bay (who destroyed six punnets of lettuce in one night!).
The Men’s Shed is busy constructing three large timber wicking beds donated by the Council, while the need to keep the vegetation, at the perimeter of the garden, short is vital, due to its bush setting.
The passionfruit vines that were planted just six months ago, along the fence line, are flourishing (with a little help from the JACK Project Mesh Trellis), as are the large variety passionfruit vines on the tepee in the children’s garden (which will also provide much needed shade and delicious treats!). And while the group loves to share its produce it has been grateful for the protection that the JACK Crop Cages provide, as some of the wildlife were taking more than their fair share!
Other crops doing well under the JACK Crop Cages are Fennel and Spring Onions, while Sweet Potatoes are being trained to climb over the JACK Coventry Arch, with a little help from JACK Jute Netting.
After a pause in gardening over the hottest months of the year, all work resumed with a large and successful working bee on March 3. Turn out was excellent and great progress was made in weeding, soil improvement and planting, together with maintenance tasks such as netting and irrigation.
The passionfruit vines continue
to be a huge success story. The vine in the children’s garden has been trained on a tee pee, supported by Jack Tie Wire, while the thriving vine on the fence line is supported by Jack Project Mesh.
Snake beans, peas, sorrel, rocket, beetroot and spring onions were carefully planted using Jack Vegie cages and Crop Cages to protect them from the local wildlife.
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