Hope and Community

Seeing children finding joy in gardening is a joy doubled for grown-ups. It gives us hope, seeing the youngest generation excited to interact with nature and fully engage with planting. That is the sentiment we walked away with at the end of a successful Children’s Sunflower Planting Day on Saturday, November 10. It gave us such joy to see young ones from 3 to 10 years old and their parents coming to the event with reusable containers to turn into planters and house their new sunflowers. We look forward to welcoming the lovely children and parents that joined us, again in January to show us who grew the tallest sunflowers and award them with their prizes. Apart from doing a bit of gardening at the community garden, we attended a Disabilities for Community Gardens training workshop hosted by City of Melbourne. That was a great opportunity to learn how we can make the new Boyd Park community garden even more inclusive and accommodate a diverseness of disabilities. We look forward to working with council on that. It was also great connecting with other community garden groups to create a knowledge sharing community, and make our respective community gardens a true haven for our communities. With the opportunity of the holidays, December will be a month where we focus on our members and strengthening our lovely community. On Saturday, December 8 we had a wreath making day where one of our members will guide us in creating sustainable Christmas wreaths using native plants and other natural material. On Saturday, December 15 we will each bring a small plate or drink from home to have a small Christmas feast and celebrate the group’s achievements and its future ahead. Since both are member events, if you are interested in becoming a member and join us on the day, please email us ahead of time to make sure we save you a spot. The Christmas event will be hosted at Boyd and starts at 10.30am. About the group: We are a community group of Southbank residents that work to bring positive change in sustainability practices and education to our neighborhood. We meet every fortnight on Saturdays at Boyd, where we talk sustainability issues and solutions, and then tend to the community garden. For more details or to get involved with the group or garden: facebook.com/SouthbankSustainabilityGroup | [email protected] Artemis Pattichi - Southbank Sustainability Group