Bruns local Toni Storer thought one way to help her neighbours and other locals to survive the economic downturn was to stop mowing and weeding the Council strip at the front of her house and to pop in a veggie garden.
‘A friend of mine was saying how expensive vegetables are, $17 a kilo for tomatoes, and I thought why not put a veggie patch out the front that anyone in the community can access,’ Toni told The Echo.
‘Gardening is something I love doing, so it just seemed like a good idea in these tough times.’
However, a recent complaint from a neighbour has meant that Byron Shire Council has told her to remove the garden.
‘I’ve lived in this house for 62 years and I was trying to be community-minded and neighbourly,’ she explained.
‘The garden is neat, clean, there are no dangerous sharp objects sticking out. You can sit on the edge of it if you need a seat for a while. There’s even cat and dog grass for the animals.
‘I put in vegetables that people would most likely use like lettuce, tomatoes, cauliflower, broccolini – nothing fancy. We might use one per cent, the rest is for people to help themselves to. They can take as much or little as they want. I just don’t understand why someone would object to that?’
Toni said she hoped the people objecting to the community garden can come and talk to her and work out what their concerns are.
‘Council staff said if there had been no complaints then they wouldn’t have had to ask me to remove the community veggie garden.’
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