Community Gardens offer enormous advantages as they provide opportunities for environmental education, promote healthy living and help build a sense of belonging among the local community. The Geelong West Community Garden operates at 129 Autumn Street, Geelong West, with over 48 member plots.

The Geelong West Community Garden is aiming to be more accessible to the members of the wider community by offering opportunities for engagement in the form of workshops, activities and events. This could include art and craft workshops for children and teenagers, gardening activities such as demonstrations of plant propagation, pizza evenings using herbs from the garden and musical events.

They hope to encourage visitors to help harvest their produce, to share food and to cook such as making pizzas and salads, and in this way build community.

In order to make this possible, Geelong West Community Garden are upgrading their facilities with the help of a $1,950 Benefit Geelong grant, which will consist of:

– security solar lights to enable them to safely hold events in the early evening

– additional tables and chairs, including for children as they currently have limited outdoor furniture

– a portable pizza oven as they currently have an obsolete brick pizza oven