Our History

Mandurah's first community garden celebrates its 10th year!

Mandurah Community Gardens provides for the local community in the Peel region with an inclusive space for people to meet and make friends, to grow food together, to share what we learn about the good nature of the garden, and to enjoy the benefits of growing beautiful plants and food together.

It has been a long and rewarding journey to take the gardens from an idea to a living place for the community. We explore the origins, the process and the plans that formed this wonderful community initiative...

The Launch Of Mandurah Community Gardens Inc.

Mayor Paddi Creevey

On a sunny Friday on the 25th May 2012, Mandurah Community Gardens Inc. was officially opened by City of Mandurah Mayor Paddi Creevey, and the first tree was planted to mark the occasion.

In The Beginning...

The story begins long before the official ceremony launching Mandurah Community Gardens Inc. — how we got to have a community garden in Mandurah has it's roots starting with interest for it from our local community, then moving on to community members working in partnership with the City of Mandurah.

This cooperative project between local government and members of the community created a truly unique community asset, that was designed to be inclusively available to all members of the community. The benefits the community with a venue for physical and nutritional health, mental health and wellbeing, environmental sustainability, food security, social inclusion, education and training, economic development, cultural vitality and community resilience.

Grown from the seed of an idea...

What if Mandurah had a place where the community could meet and garden together?
This was the simple premise of establishing a community garden for Mandurah.

A community garden's purpose
A community garden helps to define a community beyond the typical sports clubs, to create another area of inclusivity for everyone in that community. Regardless of age, gender, or abilities, a community garden helps bring everyone in the community together around the idea of growing food and plants, and growing together- as in the Mandurah Community Gardens motto, "Grow - Learn - Enjoy".

The Garden was first established as an idea in 2008 by interested local Mandurah residents and Community Development Officers from the City of Mandurah.

Funding was obtained from the Royalties for Region Scheme through the Department of Regional Development. Subsequently, the garden was supported by the Healthy Communities Initiative (Healthy Active Mandurah) by the Australian Government.

A decision was made by the steering committee to call the community garden "Mandurah Community Gardens", rather than just Mandurah Community Garden, with the view that in the future it could be expanded to other gardens around the Mandurah area.

Mandurah Community Gardens was incorporated as a non-profit organisation in 2012, and the committee meet monthly to continue the management of the gardens.

CREATED FROM COMMUNITY ROOTS
The beginnings of the project to create a community garden in Mandurah began with interested local community members coming together to form a working group called the "Happy Patches Garden Project". Through many meetings and informal discussions, these private meetings led to the formation of a steering committee in June 2011 to manage the project, to research and to plan the way forward. Eventually, the project was renamed the "Community Garden Project" and Mandurah Community Gardens was beginning to take form, progressing further with each meeting.

The amazing hard work of these founding volunteers brought the concept of a community garden to life with their extensive research, community networking, encouraging involvement of local businesses and government, and the passionate dedication of their personal time and effort.

This is the essence of what a community garden really is: It's not only for growing food and other plants — it helps the community to grow, together.

From hard work and a great team effort, Mandurah Community Gardens is here for the community.

We acknowledge the involvement and hard work of these founding members, and give special thanks to all those people who were involved in the original Happy Patches Project/Community Garden Project:
Tim Williams (City of Mandurah), Carole and Don De Silva, Les Hodgson, Jan Rowe, Matthew Skipworth, Leanne Alexander, Ray Eastwell, Craig Dobbs, Marion Clive, Jenny Boivin, Alison Matthews, Dianne Jones, Marzel Norton, Corey Boivin, Jan Rowe, Gary Carlisle, Jon Tindale, Michael Oborn, Wendy & Jeff Haywood, Jenny Ngatai, Nicole Young, Ray Eastwell, Kara Breitenbach, Zoe & Ari Foster, Lanny Hoskin, Alisdair Wardle, Rosemary Drexter, Pam Ryan, Joel Colley and Jesse Steele.
N.B. Our apologies to anyone not included in this list - if you know of someone, please let us know.

It was a big team effort to create Mandurah Community Gardens. As project member Jon Tindale would say, "Together Everyone Achieves More".

Message of congratulations from City Of Mandurah Mayor Paddi Creevey

To Tim Williams, May 30, 2012:
“Warmest congratulations to you and all your team on an absolutely great event and a wonderful project. I had such great feedback about your own role and the way you worked with the working group. This is a terrific initiative and I would like you to pass on my congratulations to everyone involved. It went so well on the day. I know a lot of work has been involved , but it is sure worth it. Well done"
~ Paddi Creevey

Preparing the site

There are many elements that make up a community garden. The founding volunteers actively sought out all the components that were needed, and then organised everything to build a community garden from concept to the finished garden.

The satellite images below show the various stages of development where Mandurah Community Gardens is from 2008 to 2012.
The quality of the images is determined by the height of the satellite and resolution of the camera when the pictures were taken.

SECURING LAND

Firstly, of course, land is required - there wont be a community garden without it.

The area had to be large enough to accommodate the needs of a community to grow food, and it had to be central and accessible to the local community.

A part of Coodanup College's land was kindly allocated to the community garden by the WA Department of Education and Coodanup College.

Originally, there was 900m² ( 0.1ha) allocated for the garden, with a fence perimeter of 148m². Later in 2013 the area was extended to its present day size of 1,172m² (0.18ha), with a fenced perimeter of 262m.

Over all these years, Coodanup College have been a wonderful friend, landlord and neighbour to Mandurah Community Gardens - without their assistance and support, the gardens may not never have found a home.

Building A Community Garden

With the planning stage done, it was time to make those plans a reality. It would require the assistance of funding, donations from businesses and individuals, and the time and effort of volunteer workers to make it come together. To help make it happen, the project got started with various funding grants, including:

LotteryWest funding $15,000 – toilet and plumbing costs.
Department of Local Governments and Communities of $9,900 for guest speakers, events and workshops.
City of Mandurah Partnership funding for three years and $12,000 for workshops, signage, equipment and events.

FROM THE GROUND UP

Starting with a bush block, many things had to be done:

The ground had to be cleared and prepared to make way for the construction of the garden beds and facilities.
Electrical power and water had to be installed.
Fences and gates had to installed.
A concrete slab was laid for the shed and undercover area, and the main shed had to be built to house the materials, tools and equipment.
Timber had to be sourced, cut, constructed and prepped protective coating, to make the garden wicking beds.
Irrigation had to be sourced, cut and installed into the garden beds.
Organic soil, mulch and hay was sourced, prepared and then spread into the garden beds.
Then the planting began...