Today the Mayor of North Sydney, Genia McCafferty, officially opened our community garden in Milson Park (Kirribilli).

The clouds and rain couldn't spoil the day. The turnout was fantastic!

Lots of people brought platters brimming with delicious nibbles. There was coffee, tea and juice (kept on ice on the potting bench).
The "ambiance", as I would say in Flemish, was warm and welcoming.
A wonderful community event.

I've put some photos online on the photo sharing website Flickr, where we've created a Milson Community Garden Flickr account and a Flickr group pool, so if you were there and took some great photos, please load them up.  If anyone has video of the opening, let me know and I'll arrange to upload it to our YouTube channel.

A BIG THANK YOU to everyone who made this happen and was there to help out and celebrate.

I joined in with our local gardening enthousiasts this morning, to help maintain the recently created community vegetable garden in Milson Park, Kirribilli. It felt so great to be outside, get my hands dirty and do something really useful for a change...
I'll definitely be looking forward to my Sunday mornings now and can't wait to see it all grow.

As far as I know, a few local residents came up with the idea earlier this year. Thanks to their clear and concrete plans, they were able to convince the local, North Sydney council to provide the plot of land to make it all happen.
As soon as they got the go-ahead, a committee was formed to coordinate the build and maintenance of the garden: Chair (Gordon Howlett), Operations Coordinator (Carole Baker), Construction Coordinator (Denny Linker) and a Council Representative (Streets Alive Coordinator, Ralph Forinash). More details on about how it came about here (pdf - 284 kb).

If you want to join in, come down to Milsons Park on Sundays at 10:30 am.

This coming Sunday, 8th Nov 2009, will be the grand, official opening of the Milson Community Garden (MCG), with live jazz music, food, drinks on ice... on the potting bench and a formal inauguration by the North Sydney Mayor, Genia McCaffery.

I also added this "experiment" of local living to the livelocal.org.au site with some pictures from this morning and will be posting regular updates on our progress there.
http://www.livelocal.org.au/experiment/171/milson-community-garden