In the shadows of Redfern and Waterloo’s public housing towers, neighbours are getting to know each other through urban farming.
City of Sydney council and the UNSW Community Development Project have initiated community gardens below the tower blocks on Raglan Street and Morehead Street in Redfern.
Residents who might only have crossed paths in the elevators and hallways now have a fresh space to meet and get to know each other while nurturing their gardens.
Project officer Eva Kaufman said the gardens are to encourage people to go out into safe green spaces.
“This gives people a public space outside of their tiny flats,” Ms Kaufman says.
“We have high mental health issues in this community so quite often the challenge is to get these people engaged,” Ms Kaufman says.
Social inclusion has become increasingly important in Redfern, a culturally diverse suburb where according to the 2006 census, 35 per cent of the population were born overseas.
Many of the elderly people who live among the area’s population of 5000 often become isolated and alienated by fear of crime.
“Something like a garden allows them to do that at their doorsteps. Through this we reach the larger issues. The end result is that they are reducing unhealthy choices.”
The gardeners will nurture seedlings in a propagation shed, germinate them and then sell them to a city farm, putting money back into the program.
BY MILLY CAFFREY
