Even though a little behind schedule my gardening group goal has been achieved, YAY! Amazingly it aligns quite nicely with what I had written for the goal. The people are friendly, interesting, and genuine, a pleasure to be with. I feel a sense of community and has already proven to extend beyond the meetings. Debbie the most experienced member has a wealth of knowledge to share and has been of immense value already. And everyone agreed on the rotational idea and to meet monthly.
The latest (2nd) meeting this time was hosted by my family in our garden. The idea being that the location of the meetings rotate around each members garden. Between the time of calling for members and actually getting some I had reconciled with the decision to just join an existing community garden. However I couldn't find a nearby one that met on weekends, I currently work Monday to Friday. This would have and still would be of great value but now I have a community garden in my own backyard and belong to another two. For me the key benefit about a rotational garden group is context. I often struggled to learn things at school when I could see no immediate application or relevance to me. And gardening is also such an art that what works at the community garden may not work at home.
I found the second meeting a great success. We did spend a lot of time talking rather than doing but I think that is to be expect in the beginning as people get to know each other. We also started with the tea and cake so what would one expect :-) After the tea and cake we spent some time discussing and planning a complete redesign of my garden, stay tuned for a latter post on that one. Everyone also brought some seeds and pots and we had a group seed planting session. By pure luck (or was it?) Debbie informed us that it was exactly the correct lunar phase for planting seeds.
I am so excited for you... I was part of such a group for 15 years in Adelaide. Ours was a weekly group, doing together those jobs that were tedious / difficult for just one person. We did not meet in the school holidays. Now I am in Cygnet, Tasmania and have started a new group and it is wonderful. Some people are new to gardening, some grow most of their food and so we share good times together every Wednesday, followed by morning tea provided by the host. I found that 5 was a good number of people. Then we each had 2 turns / school term. Good luck and have fun!
ReplyDeleteThanks Kate. The gardening group has been more valuable and enriching than I ever imagined. My mum belongs to a garden group in Tasmania (near New Norfolk), wouldn't that be a coincidence... We have 5 members as well, 3 families, 3 gardens.
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