March 2011 Update
The community garden working group has been meeting weekly to work on a design with the City of Port Phillip's landscape architect, Ashlee Rinaldi.
Please add any comments you have on the design to the forum.
What is involved in becoming part of a community garden group?
A community garden needs time commitment and enthusiasm to survive, so a good starting point is to form a working group of a committed group of people with a range of skills and experience and establish an incorporated association.
Holding a public meeting is one way to recruit involvement, extending the invitation beyond just friends and family to the wider community including residents associations, community facilities and neighbourhood houses.
The City of Port Phillip encourages community garden groups to have a clear and identified legal structure. Groups who want to work in partnership with Council on a community garden project need to apply to Consumer Affairs Victoria to become incorporated associations. Becoming an incorporated association allows groups to form their own management committee with annually elected office bearers and take ownership and responsibility for their individual community garden through regular committee meetings.
Benefits of incorporation include:
- flexibility in the management of funds
- enables groups to open a bank account
- it maintains a structure that can address management issues
- having a committee helps share the tasks of garden management
- avoids excessive responsibility being placed on a few people or the garden management becoming dominated by one person.
- groups can obtain public liability insurance cover and apply for government grants.
