About us

At Stanwell Park Eco Centre (SPEC), our vision is to create a sustainable community garden, the first of many in the northern Illawarra region, with a focus on food security, community resilience and innovation. We are a small group of local gardeners, uni students, retirees, families and innovators who want to create gardens in the Illawarra where we can all meet and share the food we have grown. We are passionate about sustainability, and by sustainability we mean environmental, economical and social sustainability. And we need your help to get our first garden off the ground to make this dream happen!                    

Watch our Introductory Video:

We are all about

1. Empowering
Up-skill our community, empowering members with the tools and knowledge to grow their own food and reduce their food miles. We plan on building an app in future that demonstrates our food mile reduction, per garden, across the Illawarra.

2. Innovating
Create spaces for innovative businesses or sustainability related start-ups to demonstrate or test small scale food growing innovations such indoor food forests, vertical gardening techniques and aquaponics systems.

3. Sharing
Provide an area where locals can share knowledge, produce and resources to help alleviate social isolation. As we have seen during COVID-19, social isolation can bring about a whole host of mental health issues. We are aiming to create a safe, tranquil space where members are welcome to share seeds and knowledge across generations.

4. Partnering
with affiliated organisations and sponsors in supporting the long term viability of locally produced, sustainable gardens. We are working with Corporate Partners who align with our sustainability values to deliver small- scale community gardens and food farms, across Australia.

5. Learning
Increase knowledge through environmental workshops and formal training. We are aiming to work with Nationally Accredited Providers on formal Permaculture or Horticulture Training for our paid staff in future.
                                                                       

6. Scaling
Demonstrate best practices in developing a scalable, repeatable model for localised community gardening projects. We are already looking at other unused public land sites across the Illawarra where communities are reaching out to us to create food gardens including Helensburgh, Otford, Coledale, Keiraville and North Wollongong.

The Challenges

Establishing a community garden hasn't been without its challenges. It isn’t always easy to secure public land approvals and bringing bright ideas to life can sometimes be challenging. We are so lucky that we have incredible interns, volunteers and community members who have been instrumental in getting us to where we are today. We know securing this funding is the beginning for SPEC, but we are ready to get our hands dirty and grow this project together!

Our mission: build the first garden in 2020

We’ve made it our mission to have a fully fenced garden and our first garden sleepers in the ground by January 2021 (pending DA approval). The funding you provide through this campaign will directly contribute to securely fencing the garden, ensuring the plots and bike sharing systems are secure.

This funding will also go directly towards the recycled shipping container which is being converting into our reception and tool storage area for our members to use.

Stanwell Park Eco Centre's first community garden, Stanwell Avenue, Stanwell Park NSW.

Our Vision

is to create a community garden in every single sububr across the Illawarra, starting north in Stanwell Park. Since June 2020, we have grown our team to include 15 passionate volunteers and interns and are still growing!

We need your help to get this garden off the ground so we can provide training and employment to our team to maintain the garden and keep it financially sustainable in the long term.

We want our gardens to last for generations to come, and for our children to be teaching their kids how to get their hands dirty and grow food in their neighbourhood, like we used to.    

How the funds will be used

When we raise our initial $15,000 goal we will be able to purchase fire-proof fencing materials, and also covering the labour and modificaton works on the recycled shipping container that will act as a reception area and tool shed for members. 

Here are the costs of the materials we have been quoted:

$9500 will cover the costs of delivery and fitout of the SPEC shipping container which is being transformed into a reception area and tool shed for members.
$5500 will provide our fire-proof boundary fence required by council and cover the labour costs to securely and safely install.

We are hoping to raise this before the December 2020 school holidays, so we can have the garden up and running, by locals and for locals by January 2021.

Help us make this happen by choosing one of the contribution rewards to the right!