CELEBRATING 15 years  - planted 2009

what's happening in the garden - news & events

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Summer is here, air & soil temps are on the way up, rain is arriving in storms with bigger winds... a tougher climate has arrived, but the
plants cope with your help for bumper  crops & growth rates.  Time to keep an eye on them with mulching, fertilizing, and enough watering to weather those hot spells... a bit like people over summer.  Teams have been busy nurturing new  plantings and rewards can be seen every few days. Check our calendar of Garden events coming up throughout the 2025 year down below.  And tap our knowledge bank to inform your next planting plans by seeing our proven  "planting guides"and maintenance tips, Click here to visit our  "How to' section and specifics for December as days lengthen, sun strenthens and temps rise, calling us all outside again.  Keep your soil quality high with continuous composting and mulched to suppress weeds.  If you haven't visited the resources and planting tips on this site take a walk through September & October guides now in our "How to" section..  Regular visits to our fountain

of growing knowledge can really get you some delicious results.

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SLEEPERS re-awakened with Woollahra Council
grant to revamp of our garden beds. In Sept this year
42 existing hardwood railway-sleepers from the original
2010 installed raised garden bed walls were replaced

courtesy of a recent Community Grant from council
after some careful planning and intensive work by a

contract work-team in just one week onsite.  Read more
about this massive maintenance-upgrade task here. 

Thanks WMC.

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Community Gardens Info-Sharing Conference
held in June. Members of Paddington's Community
Garden recently joined in this day long information
sharing festival between community gardens across
eastern Sydney hosted at the Randwick Sustainability
Hub.  Warwick & Maree Mann, and Ann represented us
and tickets were sponsored by Woollahra Council. 
Read the full report on our events page by clicking
on the link here.

 

In December 2023 our long serving President and
garden founding member Rob Joyner decided to
step down from responsibilities after 15 years of
selfless, enthusiastic contribution to our community
garden and hand the reigns to Bill Mann.  We asked
how he encapsulated the time, effort and rewards in
the garden and how things have changed.  He replied
without hesitation... " it's been 15 years of friendship,
fun and fab food." Click here to read Rob's thoughts on
two decades of change in community attitudes to
growing your own.

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ASPIRING new Gardeners? ...finally we are now
open  with limited places for new MEMBERS. Now
in our 15th year demand to join our band of over 53
gardeners outstripped the plots available during and
post-COVIDera.  We know many have been waiting to
join and can announce that 'Expressions of Interest'
can nowproceed.  Get started at the green JOIN button
in the left column of this page Green fingers crossed!
 

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i-CHRISTMAS 2024 was celebrated at our NOVEMBER 24th  monthly get together continuing  our alphabet inspired dress-up theme, this year echoing the letter "I' in our Fancy-dress garden journey... there were some very large & noticeable insects (aka Vicki & Rob), an Impressionist painting (Maree in the frame), quite a few Irish, some pasta clad i-ties translates to Italianos, several Icons of Fashion,  Ivy leaguers, Indianna Jones whip crackers, Iron-men, Interpreters and Islanders. The Committee slaved over a hot spit for hours to treat us a delicious Aussie Special-Christmas  feast of Roast Lamb, delicious salads, Spanacocta, and sweets... not to mention a knock-out fruit punch and a few other bottles of cool liquids... i-tastic as usual. You'll see all
the i-people at our party in the photos in our people-gallery section.  Happy planting in 2025.  See you in the garden in January. isn't summer great!

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​​​Top TIPS...  a number of our gardeners have shared
their experiences and insights with a series of short
workshop at our monthly meetings.  Here's 2 to enjoy;
Rob shares his hard learned lessons on successfully 
growing tomatoes (there's also a link to a segment
on ABC's Gardening Australia for even more tips from
Tino in Tasmania). . . and Djo gives us a unique

perspective on lunar planting... moon fans click here.

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​My Garden Rules!'... recipes from the gardeners. The organic produce that grows in our community garden goes into delicious healthy meals... our talented gardeners share some of their favourite veggie recipes right here.  

Sample David's 'Healthy Veggie Balls"... if you have lots of Silverbeet, or other spinach, and you'd like to do something different here's a way to make some great comfort food, inspired by the Italians, or maybe the Spanish in David's case.  Based on Strangolapreti alla Trentina here's the link...

Or... enjoy Djo's 'Ratatoueille a la Francias' recipe... eggplants are easy to enjoy warm with meats, salads, BBQed, and so delish!  Visit our recipes page and start enjoying your Aubergine harvest more.

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Or... Kylie from the A Team has cooked up a delicios  'Lemon Myrtle" cake that brings a new meaning to bush tucker.   simply scrumptous. Visit our recipes page (just below "Gallery" in the top banner) and enjoy the fruits of your garden labours with some new cooking ideas and taste sensations..

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events coming up

NEXT Garden Meeting will be on Sunday January 24th starting at 3pm

in the pergola for an update by the teams & gardeners of Summer fun & growth

There will be a delicious Harvest Meal after the meeting.... see you there
to share more gardening stories and knowledge.

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QUICK CALENDAR of 2024/5 EVENTS planned in the GARDEN for your diary

March 24 -  Plant out day for new team crops

May 26 -  Communal Working Bee to spruce up the garden

July 28 -  Another Working Bee to springboard out of deep winter

September 22 -  Team Plant Out Day for Spring crops

November 24 -  Christmas Party time already... "i" theme

January 25 -  Monthly Meeting - "How to beat those bugs"

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​10 years of GROWTH celebrated... in October 2019 (pre-COVID era) 60 of

our gardeners and friends sat down around a very long table down the centre
of our lush garden to celebrate the first decade of the Paddington Community Garden over a "Big Fat Greek Lunch".  Lots of hard work, inspiring leadership and friendship have gone into making this a successful community space.  As usual the teams of volunteers put together something special to mark this milestone.  Champagne in the pergola to start, classic entrees of Dolmades, Tzatziki & bread, followed by oodles of BBQ Lamb and Rosemary, roast chickens, salads extraordinaire, honeyed sweets and a few glasses of cold liquids, resulting in that very full feeling...  satisfaction that we have celebrated well.

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Garden members celebrate our 10 Years of Growth

over our 'Big Greek Lunch'  full tummies and lots of smiles