Willsmere Kitchen Garden - resurrecting a historic community garden

We will resurrect a community garden in Yarra Park on the site of the old Kew Asylum garden, which was a working kitchen garden for a century. This unfenced garden will service hundreds of nearby residents who have limited room to grow vegetables and create a safe space to build and support the garden and community togetherness. We will grow sustainable, organic vegetables, develop a greenhouse, bee hives, storage facilities and an orchard. There will be an emphasis on growing food from around the world to celebrate multiculturalism and regular free workshops for the community to learn new skills.

Many local residents lack space to grow, and demand for community garden plots mean local community gardens have lengthy waitlists! This project will turn an under-utilised paddock into a thriving community garden for all. Our emphasis will be on bringing the community together from the design to the development and maintenance stages. We will have regular community gatherings / events. Garden beds will be dedicated to crops common to diverse cultures. Our design will respect the history of the site, through using indigenous crops and heritage orchard tree varieties, which appeared in the original Kew Asylum kitchen garden.