Kelvin Grove Community Garden Update

Plans are well in place to launch the construction phase of our community garden, in Kundu Park, Blamey Street, Kelvin Grove. Approvals for stage 1 have been granted by Brisbane City Council and we intend to start the construction during February 2011.

Your committee have been busy fund raising and our funds currently stand at just over $6000. As well we have purchased some tools and equipment and received donations of equipment, and currently hold about $600 worth of trash and treasure donations, thanks to the generous support of our members.

Our next trash and treasure stall will be held at the Kelvin Grove Urban Village Saturday markets on the 27th of November 2010 - from 6:00 am to 1:00 p.m.

We would appreciate the donation of any of your unwanted goods, clothing or shoes. With Christmas fast approaching any items of children's toys, giftware, jewellery, manchester, books, crockery and kitchenware would be very saleable at this time of year. We regret that we are unable to sell electrical goods due to state laws. Donations of goods can be left at the Exchange on Blamey Street or we can arrange pick up from your home.

Another important fund raising venture prior to Christmas is our Monster Christmas Hamper Raffle, which we will be selling tickets for $2.00 each of 3 for $5.00. We are seeking donations of non-perishable food and drinks, or Christmas gifts which can be left at the Exchange during November.

It is our intention to set up a display promoting the community garden in front of Woolworths in Kelvin Grove during busy shopping periods and would appreciate support in manning the display. We will be selling Christmas Hamper Raffle tickets at this display stand.

A reminder that membership subscriptions for the year August 2010 to August 2011 are now due and have been set at $10.00 single and $20.00 per family. Your subscriptions includes a healthy eating cookbook designed and approved by our QUT nutrition students Caitlin and Jordan.

Your hardworking committee will be taking a break from December 20th until February 1st 2011, in order to recharge our batteries before the exciting year ahead when at last we will all be able to get our hands dirty developing our community garden in Kundu Park.

We thank you for your patience and continued interest and support.

Membership Info

Hey community members,

Just some information regarding membership to the Kelvin Grove Garden Group.

Membership is due for the 2010/11 financial year. It will be $10 for an individual or $20 for a family. Sorry no concessions. Payments can be made at The Exchange or contact Helen or Mal.

We would just like to give a big THANK-YOU to all of our supporters, we promise you the garden will be up and running in no time!

Finally just a quick reminder that our second Trash n' Treasure stall will be held this Saturday 9th October at the Kelvin Grove Markets on Blamey St. Please come and visit us!

Thanks

Market Date

Hey guys, sorry I haven't updated the blog in a while we have been busy organising the gardening resources book and the cook book to be ready for membership to the garden.

Just a quick reminder, we have a stall at the Kelvin Grove markets on Blamey St on Saturday 9th October. Please come along and support our Trash n' Treasure stall. We have priced over 600 items available including a heap of clothes and linen. Clothes will be priced between $1 and $5 so nothing that will blow the budget. A big thank-you to all the people who donated their trash!!! It is greatly appreciated. If you or anyone you know are willing to donate anything you no longer use or are willing to give up for a good cause then please come down to the Exchange on Blamey St and drop it into our Trash n' Treasure donation box.

Hope to see you there!

Update 30/08/10

Hey Guys,
The deadline for some council grants are due tomorrow so we're sending them off in the post this afternoon. Wish us luck in getting approved!!!

Visited the Burnie Brae Centre at Chermside which has a lovely community garden set up. It's still only new (been up and running for about 2 years now) but had a chat with the coordinator Jenny about how they got started and she gave us some advice.

Been finishing off a Gardening Resources Book as well as a Cook Book to give out to our members when we get up and running. There are a few first time gardeners interested in the garden so they resources book will be a great educational tool for them to utilise. The cook book also aims to include fresh ingredients from the garden that the local community can use in quick and healthy meals.

23 August 2010

A big thankyou to all who came to our trash n treasure stall on the weekend and many thanks to all those who donated items for sale. The stall was a great success for our first market experience and we look forward to running many more to come!

At the moment we're looking for clothes racks to display all the lovely clothes that have been donated so if anyone has a spare rack lying around please feel free to donate it to our cause!

Update 16/08/10

There have been lots of new developments at Kundu Park recently. Members of the garden group committee have been attending Brisbane City Council run workshops on guides to writing successful grants. We now have lots of many helpful tips to get our funding grants approved and even have a first draft ready. We are planning on attending two more this week. Wish us luck in getting approval!

We are holding our first stall this weekend, the 21st Aug at the Kelvin Grove Markets. We are selling the Villagers trash in the hopes that it will be someone elses treasure. Come round and visit our stall to talk to our lovely volunteers about getting involved in the garden.

One of our current projects is the development of a cook book to be given out when you become a member of the garden group. The cook book will aim to include recipes that can be made with fresh ingredients from the garden and will aim to include a wide range of different cultural cooking methods. We are hoping that the Villagers will contribute their own recipes to help immerse their fellow neighbours in different flavours and cooking techniques. If you have any recipes you would like to contribute to the book then please email us on kgcommgarden@gmail.com and include your details so we can inlude you on our aknowledgements page.

Grants and Quotes

Today we're going to get kickstarted with quotes so we can apply for some community grants. We need to research things like kid safe sleepers, closed compost bins, a tool shed, a slimline water tank and good quality soil. We are hoping to get as many quotes as possible so we can hand them in with our funding applications. We have got plenty of grants to fill out from Brisbane City Council and local community groups. Wish us luck!

News

Community garden group is moving along well, had our first AGM recently where 26 keen locals attended. A general committee of 11 people was formed. The general committee has formed 3 sub committees;
1. Constitution, Finance and Council Liason
2. Fundraising, Marketing and Promotion
3. Garden Construction, Planning and Planting

We also have a strong supporter base of 85 people who have expressed an interest in the garden and are on our email/mailing list.

Design plans are in....waiting for approval from council :-)

Morning Tea

Yesterday morning we visited the Beeralong Community Garden at Morningside. They had a beautiful garden setting that has been running for quite some time now. Everything is organic and the farm is fully sustainable.

Check out their site after the jump.....


www.beelarong.org.au/

Field Trip!

On Tuesday we visited the famous Northey Street City Farm. We went on a free tour of the giant four hectare site run by one of the volunteers Gary each tuesday at 9.30am. He showed us through each of the different sections of the farm including the bush tucker trees, the compost rollers and the kitchen garden.

Although the farm is a lot larger than our proposed area, the Northey St farm inspired us to keep working towards our goal of an established community garden.

Check out the Northey St City Farm website after the jump.

http://www.nscf.org.au/

After a free lunch prepared from the fresh produce on the farm we travelled on up to Chermside to visit the Burnie Brae community garden. This is a relatively new community garden with only 2 years of growing under their belt. The garden is beautifully upkept with raised garden beds for easy access to everyone. The people working there were very helpful and provided us with some contacts to get us going.

Will put up some photos soon!

Nambour Garden Expo

Last week we attended the fabulous Garden Expo 2010. We got there early and headed straight for the giant kitchen garden to get some great info for our community garden. We saw a great presentation from Jerry Coleby-Williams.
He gave us some great ideas for getting the kids involved. Using cheap styrofoam boxes the kids can grow herbs and vegies on their balcony, kick starting our community garden before it has even started! These boxes stacked together are also a great way to build a worm farm.
However, if you want a more modern type of worm farm, these colourful bins are a great idea!


We wandered around and saw some great garden ideas.






















There was also this really cool solar cooker. A great way to sustainably cook anything you want!

We got a billion booklets and and contacts and really look forward to utilizing all this information for our own community garden in the very near future.

Healthy Kids!

Last week at The Exchange we had some cool activities planned for the school holidays. On wednesday we made hulla hoops and let the kids decorate them with colourful tape. We also did cool face painting. After the kids were exhausted from all the wonderful creativity, we made vegetable faces! Getting the idea from the recent Go for 2 or 5 fruit and veg campaign, we set up bread as the face bases and let the kids decorate them with various vegetables such as celary, carrot, cucumber, bean sprouts and cherry tomatoes.
We also provided some apples and healthy dips such as hummos and olive and feta. The kids really enjoyed themselves both making the faces and eating them at the end!

Hopefully when our garden gets going we will be able to enjoy these activies using our own produce!!