Greater Green Island project member Kim Romeril said a community garden could become a reality now that the Greater Green Island Community Network had received an $80,000 a year grant from the Government for the next three years.
She admired the community gardens that had been set up in other suburbs such as Northeast Valley and Bathgate Park and believed the people of Green Island and the surrounding area would be keen to set up something similar.
"We're going to put a call out to the community,'' she said."The plan is to get a public meeting organised.''
A date for the meeting was not yet scheduled but it was likely to go ahead when a co-ordinator for the Greater Green Island Network was employed. Ms Romeril predicted the garden might be open in 12 to 18 months.
"Things take time. We don't want to come in all guns blazing and set it up and have it fall over,'' she said.
"It needs to be driven by the community, for the community.''
The garden would include vegetables available to the whole community and could incorporate ideas such as worm farms and lessons on how to grow things like heirloom variety vegetables.
"It needs to be somewhere central that the whole community can access,'' Ms Romeril said.
She hoped non-profit organisation GrowSouth, which supports the Bathgate Park School Community Garden, would help set up the garden and said the Green Island Lions Club and local schools had indicated they were keen to help.
St Peter Chanel parish had offered a piece of land behind the church to be used as the garden and this was the area of land being considered as a potential site for the garden.
Father Michael Dooley said the land had previously been used to grow vegetables by some neighbours and included a beehive run by St Peter Chanel School.
"It's a blank canvas,'' he said.
- by Jonathan Chilton-Towle
