Local places: Balgownie community garden Bally's Patch

Known as Bally’s Patch, the Balgownie Community Garden has gone through its fair share of challenges over the past two years.

It not only lost members due to COVID and was affected by vandalism, but also battled weather extremes, such as drought, floods and high winds.

However, garden coordinator Georgia McKeon said the Bally's Patch garden members remained positive about its future and impact on the community.

Here’s the story of the Lot 21, Church St, Balgownie garden.

When and how did the Balgownie Community Garden start?

It's been around for a good 10 years. It was the brainchild of a lady named Rebecca Schafer who’s one of the neighbours to the garden. She went to the council and got the various approvals to let us use the land as a garden.

Who's responsible for Bally’s Patch?

We've got a committee of people who hold positions - although there’s not huge competition for those. (laughs).

But yes, it's a committee. We have an annual general meeting. We're officially listed as a charity. Rebecca is the president of that and we make decisions collectively, but also with a certain amount of freedom. So I don't go to the committee when I think we should plant peas, for example.

You've had quite a few challenges the past few years. What sort of things have you had to face with the garden?

This year’s been particularly challenging. With the COVID lockdowns we weren't able to hold meetups for a few periods there. And also quite a few of our members are older, so even when we were allowed to get together in groups again, a lot of people were not super comfortable coming back to the garden.

We have lost members over the past couple of years, which is a shame. I understand though, that it’s been two years of interrupted meetups and planning and all those things. It’s not easy.

So at the end of 2020, we were coming to the end of the big bad drought. So that was a pretty rough time. The garden was quite affected by that. It's really hard to grow things when there's no water in the soil. Weather did get better after that, but then we had all the COVID lockdowns, which was really hard.

And then this year, as you know, we have a bit of a deer problem on the escarpment. I was going to say friendly local deer, but I'm not sure they're particularly friendly. We've got local deer who wander around the streets through there.

There was one deer there that kept pushing through our hedge. It never stole food from the garden, but there was a tree there that it particularly liked to rub itself up against.

We also had a bit of an issue with vandalism earlier this year, which was super disappointing. That was the first time we’ve had a problem with vandalism in the garden. They came through one night and just deliberately attacked the best maintained plots. They went after the nicest ones and ripped out a whole heap of plants and threw them around. We've got a container of fertilisers and potting soil and manure and whatnot. They ripped open the bags and poured them all over the place, which was both messy and expensive.

And yes, we've also had issues with the rain this year. The area is a bit of a drainage channel. During severe water weather, water does come across the site, so it ripped out one of our paths about three times.

This water goes just right in this one spot and just ripped out this path. We kept putting it back together. The last time it rained, it wasn't so bad. We managed to get a sand bag from the SES and divert the impact a little bit. Honestly, we’re just hoping it doesn't rain like that again because when it rains like that, there's not really a lot you can do.

And also when it's that wet, it's actually really hard to do any gardening work because if you walk on the soil, it compresses it, and it's not good for it. Plus, when it rains, plants can drown. Which isn't something I knew until last year.

It kind of hurts your feelings to go through all that hard work to put things in plans, to take care of them, and then they just get rained to death. Those are the challenges.

How are you all fairing then, after all of that?

It was pretty rushed for a while there. I think the third time I put the path back in, I cried.

But since things have gotten drier and we've had more people who are comfortable coming back to the garden now with COVID changes, we’ve been able to have some extra meetups in the last few months. We’ve done repair workshops as well as a planting one, and it's actually looking pretty good at the moment. The garden looks like someone loves it again.

We’ve got quite a few crops in the ground. Not really much that's ready to get eaten, but it’s starting to look like it's going to be ready in six or eight weeks, maybe.

We've got a few brassicas, we've got little cauliflower and broccoli plants. We've just put in some garlic, we've got a few ancient greens and broad beans someone donated recently. Basically, the only thing that's ready to eat are chilis.

But we've got living plants again. We've got very young beetroot and silverbeet. It's just great to see things growing again.

What does the Balgownie Community Garden mean to the local community? And why is this project so important?

It's really important to me because I'm an environmental scientist and a geographer, so I look at how people interact with the environment.

It's really good for people to have a direct connection to their environment and have an area they have some control over and influence. As well as people bringing fresh veggies to their homes, it's also really good for them to have that connection to their local environment.

I can also tell you that the patch gets treated kind of like this informal meeting spot by the locals. If you go there and poke around for a half hour, the chances are pretty good that someone else is going to rock up and check on their veggie patch or go pick some mulberries or just hang out. There are a lot of school groups that wander through there sometimes. I've seen them bring kids through just to have a bit of interaction with the natural world and plants. That's really nice.

I've seen people do yoga there. I meditate there sometimes. I've seen the neighbours hang around and have a drink.

There’s a little street library there, which my friend Erin maintains with a few books. It’s a tiny little library. You can change your books, see your mates and yeah, experience that social meetup, I think a lot of people just come along to socialise.

It's probably really useful to a lot of people in the community, to have somewhere to meet up that isn't focused around alcohol or having to spend money.

So obviously you're looking for volunteers and members. How can people get involved and why would you encourage them to get involved?

Yes, volunteers or they can become members. If you become a member, it's about $20 a year. It's not a big deal, but we do have the monthly meetup. We've got an annual Christmas party, which is really nice, and people get to hang out with other members in the community, meet other nice people in a chill setting. You can learn a lot about gardening and herbaculture and composting. There are people there who are very passionate and knowledgeable.

If it's not your thing, you can come along for a day, just hang out, have a cup of tea and go about your business and still probably make some friends.

What plans do you have for the place now?

Well, we're planning on a bit more of a summer crop this year after how the last summer fared.

Then in general, we'd like to expand. We want to get some more fruit trees into the area and Rebecca has some plans that she's been working on. We're hoping to find a grant or two and see if we can put in a retaining wall, a bit more of a kids area on the back and more seating areas for people to make it an even more appealing place too.

To learn more about the Balgownie Community Garden Bally's Patch or to become a member, visit the website.

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