To study peak community garden bodies to continue the development of our national organisation

The aim of this project is to visit international community gardening organisations to build an understanding of successful and sustainable approaches that will enable us to create a stronger community garden network across Australia.

The Australian City Farms and Community Gardens Network was established in 1996 and rebranded as Community Gardens Australia (CGA) in 2020. CGA is a small, volunteer association that has supported the development and ongoing management of hundreds of community gardens throughout Australia.

Community gardening is known to have multiple benefits to society and CGA needs to expand its activities to more effectively support existing gardens as well as expose more people to these benefits whilst encouraging the development of more gardens. Our website is a hub for information on community gardens but a broader range of information and services is required to keep pace with community expectations and safety. 

CGA needs to expand its range of offerings to potentially  include an insurance scheme, educational opportunities, organising state and national gatherings to share knowledge, provide advice and advocacy services for dealing with state and local government or other parties, supporting the establishment of new gardens, taking collective action and ensuring a more food secure future for us all.  If we become that organisation the benefits to the community will be ongoing and long lasting with greatly improved health, environmental, and food security outcomes for all Australians. The organisations I plan to visit have developed successful and sustainable models and contain elements we can apply to build the community garden movement here at home. 

Areas of interest for this project include:

• Organisational and governance structures including board recruitment; committee structures and financial management and reporting
• Membership systems and management as well as associated data management and analysis
• Organisational policies including recruitment, staffing and management
• Funding models & grants
• Group insurance schemes
• Community engagement models and methods 
• Communications strategies
• Staffing models & volunteer management in this sector
• Public education provided
• Ideas for events/gatherings/conferences that engage our members