Getting behind Chippendale's community garden

There's an interesting project going on in Chippendale at the moment. The Toby's Estate coffee crew have joined with their local community to help set up The Chippendale Road Garden Project, which aims to show how existing roads can be used to grow food, even in urban areas.

Toby's Estate have installed two special compost bins on the corner of Paints Lane and Rose St, where local residents are encouraged to join the cafe in composting organic matter such as coffee grounds and fruit and vegie scraps. The coffee bods have also started preparing a plot of ground along the side of the road, where they plan to grow fruit, vegies and herbs. The idea is that the garden will be up and running by November, with local residents welcome to do a little weeding or planting if they fancy it. Communal tools will be kept behind the Toby's Warehouse for everyone to use.

I love this idea for several reasons, not least that it allows people living in apartments to do something a little more responsible with their food scraps than merrily send them off to decompose in landfill. Yes, it is possible to get a bokashi bin or even a worm farm for the balcony but you're left with the problem of what to do with your DIY fertiliser once its ready to go. My two pot plants don't need that much fertilising and I'm not sure what the etiquette is for arriving at dinner parties with a bottle and a bag of worm poo.

Having said that, I am a frustrated gardener and I love the idea of growing my own fresh produce for the dinner table. Since the main sticking point to my own ambitions is the lack of a garden, the idea of being able to have a garden somewhere close by to do my thing in is quite appealing. Why not the nature strip?

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There's also the whole idea of it being a "community" garden, somewhere you can quite literally find "common ground" with your neighbours. Maybe it's different out in the 'burbs but getting to know your neighbours is a pretty unusual thing in the inner city, with interaction limited to the odd "hello" on the stairs. I'm always saddened - but not particularly surprised - to read in the paper about yet another elderly person who has been dead in their own home for several weeks or months and nobody thought to check on them. To my mind any project that brings people together has to be a good thing.

Although it's still early days for the Chippendale project, other councils are apparently keeping an interested eye on its progress, with a view to doing something similar within their own communities. Let's hope it's a roaring success.