Starting A Vegetable Garden
There’s nothing better than fresh-picked vegetables straight from your own backyard. Growing your own food is easy, rewarding and healthy.
The key to success is planning and vigilance. Staying on top of challenges – like insects or diseases – with regular scouting can help prevent them from spreading.
Toiling in a vegetable garden is helping veterans and first responders of southern New South Wales restore their physical and mental health.
Key points:
- A veteran support centre has been built at a former Carmelite monastery
- The centre supports more than 500 veterans in regional New South Wales
- The garden is leading to better physical and mental health for veterans
For the past two years, Wagga Wagga’s Pro Patria Centre has transformed the land of a former Carmelite monastery into rows of edible vegetation and an orchard.
Pro Patria — a Latin term meaning “for country” — is supporting more than 500 people with fresh food, with at least a dozen volunteering in the garden.
Graeme Wren is a retired wing commander who saw more than 20 years of service and is an active member at the garden.
“In a beautiful garden like this it’s easy to see how great life can be,” he said.
“But sadly, for many veterans and first responders, that’s just not the case.
“Food is medicine, and having something like this can make all the difference to someone struggling.”
Mr Wren already had a great love for gardening, but being part of the program has helped him realise the healing it can bring.
“Isolation and loneliness are the killers that we see too often, so the garden gives people an option to reconnect with themselves through nature,” he said.
“It gives people a sense of community and belonging.”
From garden to plate
Using produce from the garden, Pro Patria members are offered cooking lessons by local chefs.
Garden manager and former firefighter Tim Dick said the focus was to build something that could benefit members’ mental and physical health by taking a more holistic approach.
“It’s about prescribing them with a medicinal garden,” he said.
“It’s all well and good to eat better, to look better, but the garden is also about improving their mental state.”
The Defence all-hours Support Line is a confidential telephone and online service for ADF members and their families 1800 628 036
Mr Dick said this approach was created after seeking expert advice on nutrition and the effects it can have on the body and brain.
“We believe that having access to better food can positively affect moods and behaviours which can help our members make better choices,” he said.
Local gardening charity Erin Earth helped build the garden.
Michelle Barton and Eltan Mestan said the charity had been long-time collaborators on the project.
“We got approached a few years ago by the centre and since then we’ve been giving advice on what and how to grow,” Mr Mestan said.
As well as their time, members of Erin Earth have also donated materials from seedlings to tools.
“We wanted to help out where we could because it was a like-minded community of people wanting to help one another,” Ms Barton said.
“We’re honoured to be part of something so beautiful which will continue to grow.”
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Source: abc.net.au
