Plans for Wilton St Community Garden

Wilton Street Community Garden – Top of Wilton Street off Richmond Road behind the Gypsy Tea Room

We have a fantastic resource – the land.  There is plenty to do to develop this into a lovely and sustainable community garden and we would welcome any keen people experienced gardeners or not, who’d like to join in.

Background

The garden is on privately owned land, consisting of two combined sites, belonging to the Gypsy Tea Room and the Wine Vault.   The site was previously a very overgrown ‘vacant lot’ with a bad jasmine infestation.  So far work on the garden has consisted mainly of weed clearance and rubbish removal, which has been carried out by a handful of enthusiastic locals, mostly neighbours from Wilton Street.

Plan

Our plan is to grow herbs, pickable fruit and vegetables and maybe have a compost unit for local people to bring their compostable waste to.

We only have certainty of a medium term tenure estimated at 3-5 years minimum.   We have made the decision to develop the garden as much possible using locally sourced recycled materials.  We are hoping to get unwanted plants and materials from the local community, garden centres and businesses.

The site already has an existing fig tree, nasturtiums, some old roses (including one covered in rosehips) and a bay tree.  We have recently planted a lemon and bananas salvaged from a nearby site being bulldozed for redevelopment.  One shady corner of the site is fenced off with trellis and has existing native plants and trees.  We plan to have this as quiet amenity garden, with the balance of the site – the sunny area, used for growing fruit and vegetables.

We’d like to have a regular working bee on the site – say every Sunday afternoon.

As the garden becomes established, gardeners can work in and use the garden at any time.

Short term jobs

Soil test site – we want to grow food and don’t know the history of the site and until recently cars have been parking on it

Ongoing weed removal – spray and chop back Jasmine

Boundary fence the site – a very nice picket fence has been donated to us now we just need posts put in to attach picket sections to

Make and hang Community garden sign – this might be on the concrete wall behind the garden

Repair existing trellis fence and gates

Shift concrete tubs and bathtub to better location on site

Build compost bins and raised garden beds – we may need some top soil to build up beds to begin with.

Materials we require (recycled is fine)

8-10 Posts for perimeter fence (minimum 2 m length)

Untreated timber (or other material) to construct compost bins and garden beds

Clean topsoil/compost for beds

Useful Plants

We are using OOOOby (Out of Our Own Backyards) as a way to stay in touch and also learn from other gardeners who are are not in Grey Lynn. Here is the the link.