Joyous July at SSG Gardens

Gardens are not made by singing “Oh, how beautiful,” and sitting in the shade – Rudyard Kipling.

At the Southbank Sustainability Group (SSG) community gardens, the above lines resonate and inspire all our regular volunteers. Gardens are evolving spaces and need constant attention, especially an open community garden like the SSG garden at Boyd Community Hub.

When the temperatures in July were forecast at freezing single digits, most people would prefer huddling by the heater with a warm cuppa. These freezing winter mornings, the SSG volunteers would don their warmest winter gear and regularly turn up to tend to the SSG garden beds and spaces.

The garden beds were cleaned of all litter (including sandwich boxes, beer cans, nappies, tissues, and bottles) and refreshed with soil (as some passers-by did help themselves to garden bed soil for home gardens). After this, the beds were planted with some fast-growing leafy Asian vegetables, snow peas, broad beans, sweet potatoes were tended to, and nutrients solution sprayed.

As always, the community’s request is more herbs. This winter, along with regular herbs, we planted coriander and more varieties of Asian herbs. It is heartwarming to note that our herb selection has always been appreciated by community residents, including some local restaurants and home chefs.

As part of SSG activities in the past few months, we have included a session on the use of different herbs in SSG gardens and culinary practices of different cultures. At the gardening session on July 4, after general maintenance tasks, the volunteers got together for the herb presentation of the month.

This month, the “curry plant” was presented by Niki. She informed the group about the use, growth characteristics, medicinal and nutritional qualities of curry plant leaves. Post the information session, Nikki invited all members to taste a healthy homemade Indian savoury dish made out of chickpea flour and yoghurt – called Khandvi – especially garnished with curry leaves. The flourish with which Nikki unveiled her dish sure outdid some MasterChef contestants in her taste and presentation of a dish.

In the past few years, our volunteer team has been getting together to celebrate “Christmas in July” – a very special Australian tradition. The SSG family has been growing over the past five years, and several multicultural members from around the world are joining us.

This year, it was a wonderful opportunity to get together with new members and celebrate “Christmas in July” with a variety of different dishes from different cultures. The much-loved preparation of the day was Serena’s Thai Massaman Curry.

Christmas in Australia is synonymous with pavlova. Faye and Ray’s special chocolate ripple cake and Christmas decorations did complement our joyous July celebrations.

It has been a wonderful journey being part of this group, and I enjoyed contributing this column on behalf of the Southbank Sustainability Group.

We will soon be seeing a new format of Southbank News to match the current times – Southbank News will now be The Melburnian. At SSG we will continue to celebrate change, which is the only constant, and our young SSG members have been updating our socials with the latest information.

Come and join us to know more about our activities.

About the group

The Southbank Sustainability Group is a solutions-focused community group of Southbank residents working to bring positive change in sustainability practices in the community.

Reach us at: [email protected] or via Facebook and Instagram.

If you are interested in getting involved with the Southbank Sustainability Group, join us at a Saturday meet-up or send us an email. •