Seeds Communal Garden: 23/03/2020 to 15/06/2020

SEEDs Communal Garden is a Milparinka initiative that provides opportunities for meaningful roles, community connections, and friendships to grow along with the garden. Jo Townsend, Manager of the Garden and Community Development, explains, “It’s an inclusive and diverse place where people can come together. The external community members come in for various reasons; some of them purely want to garden, others to form relationships and some are here for therapeutic means”.  

Prior to COVID-19, engagement with the garden consisted of a twice weekly Garden Club, who's members included external community and participants of Milparinka. Frank Crupi, Chief Executive Officer of Milparinka explains, “It is absolutely fantastic because what it creates for us, is people who have disabilities, not necessarily sharing a space with other people because they have disabilities, but sharing a space because they have a common interest”. This occurs in synergy with the organic growth of the garden through its natural networks, shared stories, mutual opportunities, and community events.   A selection of local businesses also donate their compost to the garden. Through some of these transactions, participants have gained employment from these businesses. 

As Covid-19 was becoming a safety concern to Melbourne, Seeds decided to close their garden to the public on 18/03/20. Garden members, participants, Miplarinka staff and the extended local community were understanding, yet also devastated. As the general public didn’t have access to the garden, and the centres participants did, Seeds and Milparinka came up with different ways to continue the garden's engagement with the local community. “We were delivering care packages of garden produce to different people. We were also dropping off seedlings to encourage people to do gardening at home and doing a lot of garden tutorials”, Jo describes.

Website: https://www.milparinka.org.au/index.php/news/garden/

Seeds Communal Garden instagram: seedscommunalgarden

Location: 331 Albert St, Brunswick, Vic, 3056