Page 4571 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 18 October 2011
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areas on its own urban fringe but it does have the potential to grow more of its own food. Backyard vegetable production, vegie gardens, fruit trees, community gardens and city farms are all options we need to make provision for into the future.
The inclusion of community gardens in greenfields estates is widely recognised as contributing to sustainability and community development. I am aware that the Land Development Agency is exploring how it can begin to incorporate these types of initiatives into its estates. Last year, the LDA sponsored the Canberra Organic Growers Society, COGS, community gardening conference at the University of Canberra. This sponsorship assisted in the organisation of the conference. The positive benefits of the LDA’s sponsorship of the community garden conference include strengthening the LDA’s relationship with COGS and promoting the LDA’s environmental and community building credentials as well as embracing innovative approaches to greenfields development.
COGS currently administers 11 community gardens across the ACT. The LDA has held several preliminary discussions in relation to its interest in running a community garden in Coombs, site selection and possible models of governance. These discussions have been positive, and the LDA is looking for a suitable site in Coombs for a community garden. The COGS management committee has agreed in principle to establish and run a community garden in Coombs. The approved business plan for Wright and Coombs contains the action of investigating forming a partnership with COGS to provide this community garden.
Community gardens are being promoted by a range of other stakeholders, including the Planning Institute of Australia and the ACT and region conservation council. At the same time, Territory and Municipal Services is discussing the proposed formation of a community garden in Forde. The government will continue to support the establishment of new community gardens, as it has already done for many years.
Beyond facilitating licence arrangements to use land, the government has and continues to directly support the establishment of new community gardens. In order to facilitate the appropriate allocation of land for community gardens in the context of other recreational pursuits, the Environment and Sustainable Development Directorate has established an interagency work group responsible for drafting policy that will inform the Canberra spatial plan, or indeed the ACT planning strategy, the territory planning codes and the recreation strategies. The government is looking at a number of initiatives to facilitate community gardens in the ACT, including a one-stop shop approval process, exemption from development approval, waiver of licence fees, preparation of site selection criteria and information about community gardens on a centralised site through the ACT government’s web presence.
It is the government’s intention to establish and manage gardens until a group is ready to take over management of the site. The government will, however, support the identification of suitable land for such future community initiatives as the demand rises.
The government is also proceeding to implement the range of initiatives that I announced on 28 June this year in my response to the resolution of the Assembly of
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