Jingili Community Garden

About Jingili Community Garden

Jingili Community Garden is an allotment community garden that offers members the ability to organically grow their own produce. The garden was begun in 1995 by Lila Notely with assistance from the Darwin City Council and Power and Water to address community concerns on health impacts from industrial agriculture on shop bought food quality local food insecurity. Many of our members live in apartments and/or are recent immigrants who value being able to grow culturally familiar food crops and needing access to a community garden. 

The garden is an incorporated association with a committee elected annually to manage subscriptions, maintain the irrigation system, provide garden tools, organise monthly working bees, social events, annual open days and external community organisation involvement. We have a self-sustaining business model, with member subscriptions covering the annual running costs. We do not currently rely on government grant funding. Members subscribe to thirty, 20 square meter plots that they manage individually to produce short growing food plants. There is a shared orchard area for tree crops. The total fenced area is 1,500 square metres (0.15 Hectares) in the Jingili Water Gardens area (114,400 square metres, 11.4 Hectares). The land is zoned OR (organised recreation) at 91 Freshwater Drive, Jingili. 

While community gardens are not specified in the NT zoning scheme for OR land use our activities are consistent with the scheme. The current annual membership/plot fee is $50 or $100 (one off payment- per individual/couple/family/group) depending on the size of the plot. There are also concessions available for full-time students and pensioners ($25 or $50 depending on the plot size). The Friends of the Garden (FOG) annual membership is $20, concession $10. Members need to maintain a weed free boundary fence line to meet City of Darwin and Jingili Water Garden requirements. Our annual membership turnover is 5-10% We operate sustainably by minimising waste, irrigating to meet plant water use, avoiding use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides and keeping costs within our subscription income.