Page 645 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 9 March 2011
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the original condition. Since this occurs at a time when the local group is too small to operate, as was recently the case in Theodore, the considerable cost of such a reinstatement falls to COGS itself.
If a community group does not wish to join COGS then the opportunity exists for it to establish a garden on its own and under its own licence. The group will need to be sufficiently large to cover operating expenses and remain viable on an ongoing basis. The Department of Land and Property Services and TAMS currently collaborate to identify potential sites when inquiries for the establishment of an additional garden are received.
There is an increasing interest in establishing community gardens in Canberra and a number of COGS gardens, it is acknowledged, do have waiting lists. This follows trends in other places where a growing number of successful gardens are being established, particularly in Sydney and Melbourne. When a proposal is received, the true demand and catchment for a particular garden will need to be demonstrated in order to determine its long-term management and viability. The catchment for each of the existing gardens around the ACT, it should be noted, is fairly large and the membership is certainly not restricted to people from any particular area.
The government recognises the need to allocate land specifically for gardens in the same way that it recognises the need to set land aside for sporting groups. The allocation of land enables community groups to establish themselves with greater security when there is sufficient interest and resources to sustain a garden. It is not envisaged that the government will establish and manage gardens until a group is ready to take over management of the site, but it is expected that adequate land will be maintained for such future community initiatives.
In order to facilitate the appropriate allocation of land for community gardens in the context of other recreational pursuits, the ACT Planning and Land Authority has established an interagency work group responsible for drafting a policy that will inform the Canberra spatial plan, the territory plan codes and recreation strategies. The work group will consider issues related to underused land, collocation with other complementary uses, impacts on public use, criteria for the selection of appropriate sites in established suburbs and the allocation of sites within new suburbs. To that end, the interagency working group will investigate how the practices of other jurisdictions can best be tailored to the needs to Canberra.
This value of community gardens was stressed in the sustainable future workshops held by ACTPLA and was raised as a high priority. Food security, food miles and Canberra as a distribution centre for regionally produced food was also a common theme in the recent broad public engagement “time to talk: Canberra 2030”. The government is actively supporting and planning for community gardens.
There is a criterion in the Lawson south precinct code for the provision of community gardens. Opportunities for community gardens are being investigated in East Lake, as well as what more extensive opportunities there might be in the Majura Valley as part of the eastern broadacre planning work. In the Molonglo Valley, urban open space zones have been identified that may be suitable for use as community gardens. The
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