By Callum Ludwig
Yarra Valley ECOSS’ Community Garden has been named as the winner of Community Gardens Australia’s Sustainability Champion award for 2023.
A few ECOSS team members and community garden volunteers from the All-Abilities program came together for the exciting announcement to watch on as the awards ceremony was held via Zoom.
Executive Director of Yarra Valley ECOSS Chelsea McNab said they were really excited to receive the award.
“It places us more on the map, we’re pretty proud of our community garden but we are also hosting the statewide community gardens gathering on April 20 so it it was great timing to try and raise the energy for that,” she said.
“I think we won the award because the garden is very inclusive, as most of the gardeners are living with other abilities in the garden and they also did recognise that we’re using biochar, have got community compost and donate the food to the Oonah Indigenous Tucker Bag program and the Koha Community Cafe.”
Volunteers have come from Melba Support Services and Interchange Outer East among other places to tend to the ever-evolving ECOSS garden.
Ms McNab said it was great to have the efforts of the volunteers recognised.
“Kaylee who has been volunteering in the community garden for six years, came along and she was so excited especially as she got to meet Costa (Georgiades, of television show Costa’s Garden Odyssey),” she said.
“The experiences are so rich, you get to learn from others and to share your skills and it brings so much joy to people’s lives by just connecting with others in the garden, in such a beautiful space,”
“Growing food that then is donated feels really good, like you’re doing something for you know for the broader society, and I would encourage anyone and everyone to join a community garden.”
The Sustainability Champion award was judged on ‘gardens using great ideas that improve environmental resilience’.
Ms McNab said in the near future, gardeners at ECOSS will be up the all the usual stuff for this time of year with autumn plantings and lots of mulching.
“We just extended the new lemon orchard in the back area, and things and the design are always changing in there,” she said.
“We’ve had some biochar test plots happening and we’ve been looking at the differences in growth where we’re using biochar, other than that it’s just general like maintenance at the moment,”
“It takes a lot of work just to keep it weeded and keep the pathways in good condition so we are in a bit of a downtime for the moment while we prepare for autumn.”
