“Watching stuff grow” is what Rod Logan enjoys the most. Together with Lindy Cheetham the 63-year-old Woonona officially launched the Woonona Community Garden last year.

Once a paddock for horses, the area – near Collins Creek in Carrington Street – is now a thriving garden full of rows of lettuce and broccolini, among many other plants. More importantly, it is full of volunteers weeding, pushing wheelbarrows and digging up garden beds.

Lindy and Rod say they were not sure if anyone would show up, but judging by the amount of people working up a sweat on a Saturday morning, the garden has been a big hit.

“It’s amazing,” Rod says. “People came and joined, all these people with different skills and different backgrounds.”

With a 20-year background in Landcare Australia – a not-for-profit organisation that supports communities in building sustainable agriculture and protects local ecosystems – Rod has seen a lot grow. He has also worked on a large organic farm and currently works for Green Connect.

“That’s the great thing about Rod,” Lindy says. “He’s had such a great amount of experience, he can actually share his experience and knowledge with us here and that disseminates down through all of the members of the garden.”

Rod is Lindy’s neighbour and they met when walking their dogs. Both share a love of gardening and growing vegetables. Lindy: “As Rod says, just to watch the plants grow – and even if that means, watch the pests come – it’s such an enlivening experience.”

The community garden has working bees twice a week. On Saturdays they start at 8.30am and finish with morning tea. As a member you can come down and garden at other times as well.

“There is nothing better than breathing the smell of fresh healthy soil,” says Lindy. “It really doesn’t matter what you do with a plant. If you don’t have good soil and good micro-organisms living in that soil, your plants will never thrive.”

Besides growing food, the community garden also looks after the surrounding native areas, regenerating plants and getting rid of weeds.

Rod wants council to identify more sites and provide more support to the community garden movement. It took four years of campaigning to receive official permission to use the land they are on now.

“We were lucky that we had the energy and the expertise to keep pursuing a plot for a community garden, but if a few people want to get together to form a community garden, they would easily be put off by that process.”

The pair stress that the social aspect of the garden is as important as growing food. On the morning the Flame attended the garden, this was amply confirmed during morning tea with the volunteers.