1,000 signatures reached
To: Collingwood Children's Farm Committee of Management
Protect the Collingwood Community Garden!
We need your support to protect the Collingwood Community Gardens! We reject the action taken by the Collingwood Children's Farm Committee to close the gardens indefinitely without consultation with the gardeners to whom the place means so much.
As a collective of plotters at the gardens, we want to address the concerns raised in the OHS report by Productivity Matters – but we need the Farm Committee to engage with us and work together to make this happen. We want it to be a safe and sustainable place for us and for people who come to walk through our plots.
We are asking the Committee of Management to:
- reinstate access to our plots immediately
- stop the planned redevelopment
- come to the table and engage with us on what we need to do to make the garden safe
We want to work with the Farm Committee both now and in the future – but we want to be involved in decision-making about the garden and our plots.
We want to understand what we need to do in future to keep the garden safe, and we want to maintain and strengthen the community-centric and grassroots nature of the garden.
We're calling for a Green Ban on any proposed development at the Collingwood Community Gardens.
Why is this important?
Operating since 1979, the Collingwood Community Gardens are under threat of being bulldozed. The destruction of this important cultural and community space was announced by Collingwood Children’s Farm Committee of Management on Thursday, 3 June.
Citing ‘safety concerns’ such as uneven ground, the use of removable metal cladding and ‘piles of wood and sticks’ as the catalyst, the Committee of Management made the determination to indefinitely close the Gardens, situated on Crown land, without community consultation. There is no evidence that alternatives to the bulldozing of this important community space were considered, even after multiple volunteers offered to fix the issues cited in the report.
For generations families have nurtured this space, using it as a place to share knowledge, connect with the earth and build community. Many Plotters (a warm term used by those that tend to the gardens) rely on these gardens for their food production, social activities, exercise and mental health. There are multiple stories of migrant families that have kept their culture and knowledge alive through the activities at the Gardens.
How it will be delivered
In person to the Collingwood Children's Farm Committee of Management.