More Gardens as Labour Day Approaches.
There are community gardens springing up in churches all across the country. I am really excited about this. Nothing looks better than a good, well cared for vegetable plot. As I have mentioned before, it was not that long ago that part of a bishops rounds was an inspection of the vegetable garden at the vicarage. Times have changed, and we are changing them back.
Community gardening on church lawn space also helps build community resilience – preparing for upcoming challenges from a decline in cheap oil. In a small way it also begins to address one of my great sadness-es with our social services. Don’t get me wrong here. I love our social services. The more I have got to know the hearts of the people involved in running the Anglican Care and Anglican Action programmes the more impressed I have become. What makes me sad is that our professional social services (and they do have to be professional) must increasingly fill a gap that would once have been sorted out simply by a functioning healthy community. At one time if someone was hungry, lonely, struggling, needed budget advice, an advocate, or short term support, the community would rally around and support them. Not in every case at all times in any way needed, but certainly a lot more than now. We need our social services, and I am glad we are in a country with official safety nets, but making intentional steps towards re-energising healthy, resilient local communities may reduce some of their work load. Social services don’t let the rest of us off the hook. Community gardens in a myriad of forms, stretching through the back sections of suburbia, is a step in this direction.
However, there are church grounds gardens and church grounds gardens. If you dig over the church lawn, plant it out, then invite the community to come and take part, that is not really a community garden. It’s a church garden using the same attractional model we apply to our services. If we go and talk the community, our neighbours, local groups, the local Transition Town people and others already engaged in our communities, discuss our needs, offer the land, and dig the lawn over with the community, that’s a community garden. Both of these models are happening in various parts of the country at the moment. Both are better than lawn – but one is better than the other.
Justice isn’t about giving someone a fish, or teaching them to fish. But about asking who ownes the pond? Who makes the decisions? Who has the power?
Facebook comments: