Community Garden and Art Project in Mitchell Park

[marionlife]

Hi All,

Are you an avid gardener, artist or interested in volunteering at a local community garden? Do you live near Mitchell Park? If yes, this may be of interest to you!

My name is Chelsea and I am the Co-Director at a not-for-profit community organisation called MarionLIFE Community Services Inc.

We have recently received funding from the City of Marion to develop a small community garden and Art Project here at the Centre. We are very excited about this prospect and see it as a fantastic way of connecting and partnering with our local community. We are situated on 887 Marion Road, Mitchell Park and I am looking for some interested local people to be involved in the development of this project.

A bit of background about the MarionLFE and this project:

Over 2000 clients access emergency relief and other services from MarionLIFE every year. These clients have complex needs and are often in financial crisis, single parents, experiencing mental illness etc. The Community Gardne and Art project will enable MarionLIFE to provide a more holistic service to the community. This project would not only have clients as participants, but also empower them to make decisions about what plants are chosen, the type of art created and the sort of events held utilising the garden space. The community garden would help foster a sense of belonging, connection and identity and provide recreation, exercise and relaxation opportunities for the community.

The garden space will be communal and used for teaching, learning and community events. The produce that we grow will be distributed among the volunteers and also donated to the Emergency Relief and assistance programs that MarionLIFE run, including their twice monthly community meal. 

Our garden will be in a small space approx. 8 x 7m and will use both raised containers and one or two garden beds. We also have funding for both organic gardening workshops as well as community art workshops.

I am looking for people who are interested about being a part of a reference group, who will meet four times (every two months) while the garden is being established to brainstorm and drive the way it will look, how we will connect and partner with the community, what plants we will plant etc. Also it would be great to hear from people who are interested in volunteering or who have had experience in running garden or community art workshops.

If you are interested in finding out more, please either reply to this post or contact me on: 82 770 304 (ask for Chelsea) or csize@marionlife.org.au

Thank you Kindly,

Chelsea Size.