About six months ago I noted that the Goodwood Library Garden seemed a bit neglected and spoke to the head librarian about taking it on as a project. She said that there was community interest but that an attempt at starting community management of the garden had not made progress. I decided to start designing. The garden is very spacious and surrounded by a galvanized steel fence. I am designing a garden to educate local young people who pass through the library in a constant stream, on green issues and opportunities in the green industries, This educational garden is also geared at solving one of the library's problems, children who are dropped off and without supervision, create a disturbance in the library. So there will be an outdoor classroom where they can perform and move about and be given educational green projects to work on, with a roster of volunteer teachers. Not all the librarians are persuaded, but I hope in time that the project will be realized. In the meantime I'm working on resolving a design incorporating all existing elements, low maintenance and free of cost additions, which can be added bit by bit as materials and plant donations come in. It will include a nursery to provide free plant material to all other libraries in Cape Town, so that the possibility exists that they can be developed similarly. Other parts of the garden will be a permaculture garden, indigenous edibles, a food forest, a patch of Strandveld Fynbos, an indigenous medicinal garden, and a calming shaded walkway under the trees to the outdoor classroom for children and adult's green workshops. Anyone who can give a green workshop free of cost please contact me at [email protected], and for more information on the project, check out my page on green idiom
http://www.greenidiom.com/library-gardens.html
http://www.greenidiom.com/library-gardens.html