Creating the Community Garden has been R.O.L.E. Foundation’s most recent permaculture project. The idea evolved from the struggle of proper alimentation of many in the COVID-19 crisis. With the community garden as a future-orientated approach, R.O.L.E. is following its goal to encourage people to create a resilient environment.
The setup of the community garden
A public space has been created in the permaculture garden, for the neighbouring communities to take part in growing vegetables. It’s situated between the existing vegetable garden and the fruit trees garden. After clearing the space, we made an action plan based on analysis of the existing space, taking the aspects of sun, shade, wind, and natural perpetrators into account.
Extra focus was on the slope of the land and how to avoid rainwater from draining off, to keep the garden humid in a natural way. With this in mind, we created six big raised garden beds and two banana/papaya circles.
We reused stones from the site and old building materials as the garden beds’ borders to keep the soil in place. The next step was to fertilize the soil, as it consists mostly of limestone with a thin layer of soil and grass. Therefore, “sheet mulching” was applied, which is based on layers of compost, manure, cardboard, branches, and straw. This provides good growing conditions for the plants.
Additionally, beans were planted to absorb atmospheric nitrogen and release it in the soil. After that, other plants were planted in three garden beds, using the saved seeds from the already existing vegetable garden.
Inviting the neighbouring communities
Now the plants are growing. Next step is to develop strategies for how to invite and encourage the neighbouring communities to take part in the permaculture garden while exchanging agricultural knowledge.
Join us!
Would you like to take part in the gardening activities and/or exchange ideas and knowledge? Reach out to Rani program@rolefoundation.org!
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