Did you know that the lush Pentridge Community Garden only began in 2016? We’ve collated a brief history of this wonderful garden. Click here to read it!
Why we love communal gardening!
Did you know that although our gardens have personal plots, over half of our garden space is dedicated to communal growing area? There are several advantages to this…
You don’t have the pressure of running a whole plot on your own. You can share the load with others! This is especially beneficial if you’re new to gardening. If you go on holidays or want a break from the garden, you don’t need to stress about keeping your plot maintained. Gardening with others is a great way to meet your neighbours and expand your knowledge! The amount of people who can join our gardens is virtually unlimited, with no wait lists for joining as a communal gardening member (if you feel so inclined, you can join PCG here and WBCG here). You have the option to adopt a personal plot in addition to your communal gardening membership, if one is available. You have the space to grow a huge variety of different crops without being limited to your plot space & crops that grow well together. There is always PLENTY of produce to go round. We often have so much left over that we give it away to people walking past the gardens! Our plot holders get involved in the communal space too, sharing their knowledge and excess produce. If you want to check out one of our gardens before committing to a membership, come along to a working bee and say hi! You can see what’s happening here.
Open Garden sessions are back at Pentridge Community Garden. Learn to garden in Coburg with your neighbours.
After a disrupted year, we’re very pleased to announce that Open Garden sessions are back at Pentridge Community Garden! Open Gardens will be happening Sundays from 10.30am until daylight savings ends (then we will move back to afternoon sessions).
If you’ve never attended an Open Garden before, here’s how it works:
- This is our informal, weekly catch up for gardening members. We set the time loosely – people tend to start arriving from 10.30am, but it’s common to see other gardeners deep into the afternoon depending on people’s schedules.
- We use these sessions as an opportunity to meet other members, discuss what needs to be done in the garden and assign jobs or activities. On a typical day you might see members planting seedlings, weeding, pulling out spent crops, preparing garden beds for new crops, staking vines, spraying fruit trees or pruning the bushes.
- Open Gardens are also used to tackle some of the bigger jobs at the garden, like building new garden beds or working on the hydroponics system.
- If you’re new to gardening, we recommend attending an Open Garden session. It’s the quickest way to meet people and learn from our more experienced members.
- At the end of the session, we sit down for a cuppa and a chat.
- Before you leave, make sure you take home some fruit and vegies. There’s always something to harvest and plenty to go around.
If this sounds really good to you, but you’re not yet a member, check out our membership options here.
If you’ve never visited Pentridge Community Garden before, you’re welcome to pop in and take a look any time the gate is open. Members of the public are also welcome to drop off their compost during Open Garden sessions.
We hope to see you at our next Open Garden – happening Sundays from 10.30am in the summer months.
Big thanks to Jo as she leaves the PCG Organising Committee
Friends, join us in saying thank you to the original Marathon Woman, Jo Stavers. Jo is leaving our organising committee after having served since 2017, including two stints as Convenor.
If you’ve been to one of our fundraisers over the years, it was probably organised by Jo. She’s the woman who just keeps going and going and going. (Sometimes literally rocking up to volunteer after having just run a marathon.)
Jo is an incredible communicator who is able to drive us to an outcome, no matter how stuck we are. She’s confident and clever yet somehow completely down to earth. She is also generous with her time and her space – we’ve had countless Committee meetings sitting around Jo’s dining room table.
If there’s one image that exemplifies Jo’s attitude, it’s watching her happily tuck into a piece of bread with tomato sauce after a long day at the Bunnings Sausage Sizzle. (As a vegetarian she flips the snags but can’t eat them!)
We are very sad to lose Jo from our Organising Committee, but we are glad that she will still be part of our garden as a general member.
Hopefully we can meet again soon to say cheers over a beer. For now – thank you Jo. We’re raising a virtual pint in your honour.
Pentridge Community Garden is welcoming new members again
Have you been wanting to learn how to garden in the inner city? Maybe you picked up up some skills over lockdown, and you’d like to move to growing your own vegies?
Great news, because Pentridge Community Garden is accepting new members again. We’re very excited to welcome new people to our friendly garden in Melbourne’s northern suburbs.
Our community garden is different to most. We didn’t want our garden to just be rows of private beds where individuals don’t interact with each other. So we’ve built a large communal space that we look after together.
It means that we can learn from one another, experiment with different plants, and we have heaps of different crops on the go. Gardening members share the harvest, and there’s always plenty to go around!
Right now you can visit the garden and expect to go home with rhubarb, zucchini and peas. And we’re planting chillies, capsicum and tomatoes for summer- yum.
We welcome members of all ages, ethnicities, abilities, genders and sexualities. And it’s ok if you are a complete newbie – we are here to help you learn!
So if you’ve been meaning to get more connected to your neighbours and the environment, join us at Pentridge Community Garden!