CELEBRATING 15 years  - planted 2009

what's happening in the garden - latest news  - April 2025

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Autumn has arrived as air temps begin their way down, but rain and wind storms continue to arrive in a more extreme, tougher climate means plants cope only with your help for ongoing crop yield.  Time to keep an eye on them with mulching, fertilizing, and enough watering on those unexpected hot days
to weather these changing conditions.  Teams have been busy nurturing their new plantings and rewards are awaited eagerly... time to prepare & nurture. 
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 April as days roll on through to daylight-saving end, sun window shortens and temps begin to cool, time for
a fleece maybe.  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 April & May 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 2024. Members of Paddington's
Community Garden 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 open
again  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.  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, summer delivered, more ahead !

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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 delicious  '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 in 2025

NEXT Garden Meeting will be on Sunday April 27th starting at 3pm
 - in the pergola for an update by the teams & gardeners as days shorten further and autumn takes hold.  There will also be a delicious Harvest Meal
after the meeting brought to us by Team C .... see you there to share more gardening stories and knowledge.

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QUICK CALENDAR of 2025 EVENTS planned in the GARDEN for your diary

March 23 -  Teams Plant out Day for autumn/winter crops, starts 2pm

May 25 -  Communal Working Bee to spruce up the garden

​August 24 -  Communal Working Bee on new projects
September 24 -  Team Plant Out Day for Spring crops

November 30 -  Christmas Party... "J" theme this year

January 2026 -  Monthly Meeting - "To be advised"

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​Many years of GROWTH celebrated back in October 2019 (pre-COVID era)
60 of our gardeners and friends sat down to celebrate the first decade around
a very long table down the centre of our lush garden 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 Year Garden Anniversary

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