Karen Bond who is a member of the Newport Community Garden gave an address to a recent meeting of the NRA. The address was most informative and is noted below.

Additionally Karen has put together a very good video of the garden and is really worth viewing before reading the below.

Video Newport Community Garden


A Community garden is defined by the Australian City Farms and
Community Gardens Network as ‘an area of shared land where
people come together to cultivate fresh food, to learn, relax and to
meet new friends’.
In mid 2014 the former Pittwater Council approved for exhibition the
draft Community Gardens Policy and nominated Woolcott Park,
Newport as a potential site.
At the Council Meeting in late 2014 Woolcott Reserve was formally
adopted for use as a community garden. Council put aside compost
bins, a worm farm, and a little boat for the garden.


We encourage all local residents to bring their kitchen scraps and
suitable waste to our compost bins and worm farms.
The design, development, and management of community gardens
in Pittwater is subject to the Pittwater Community Garden Guidelines
and is funded by the community garden memberships, grants and
fund raising. While the community gardens will take up an area of
land within the parks, the park remains open for everyone to visit
and enjoy.
Newport Community Garden is affiliated with the Peninsula
Community Gardens Inc. and provides a communal space for
members to meet, socialise, grow organic fruits, vegetables and
herbs.
With that in mind, there are no individual plots at the Newport
Community Garden. We’re all growing everything together!
At present we are growing Winter plants; Cabbage, Kale, Broccoli,
Spinach, Carrots, Zucchini, pumpkin, sweet potato. We are also
starting to plan for the coming Spring season. Currently we have over
30 garden beds and are focused on getting the soil right; the PH
needs to be correct to maximise plant health and growth.
We’re have also experimented with No Dig Gardens with varying
degrees of success.


Over the past 5 years we have been very successful with both local
and state government grants which has allowed us to put in a shed,
buy tools, install irrigation for the beds, add to the number of garden
beds we have, buy plants, worm farms and install rain water tanks.
We’ve also had significant support from Bunnings Belrose, ANL and
NB Council.
We have also been lucky to have The Garden Gurus use the
Community garden to film content for some of their segments.
We have also been involved in the Sydney edible Garden Trail.
Paid membership is open to local residents willing to participate in
establishing gardens and growing sustainable food. New members
are always welcome. We communicate via What’s App when not in
the garden together, so members can be kept updated on what’s
happening next.


Becoming a member of the garden provides the opportunity to forge
friendships with your local community and learning the principles
organic gardening, recycling, composting, worm farming, native
bees, and other techniques associated with sustainable living.
Together we plan, plant and harvest fruits, vegetables and herbs that
we have sustainably and organically grown in our communal garden
beds.
Members meet every weekend (usually on Saturday mornings) for
general upkeep; watering, pruning, weeding, pest control, compost
and worm farm care, crop harvesting and of course a social chat over
a cuppa.
3 REASONS FOR JOINING US

Application Form