Migrant and refugee settlement agency AMES Australia has received funding from the Victorian Government to create a new sustainable community garden at its Noble Park site.

The proposal will see a multi-stage development of open spaces at Noble Park.

To mark the funding announcement, the site was visited last week by local Upper House MP Lee Tarlamis and AMES CEO Cath Scarth.

“We see an opportunity to develop the space over a number of years into an environmental sustainability precinct, similar to the Ceres Community Environment Park in Brunswick,” Ms Scarth said.

“The broader aim of the precinct is to engage and give a space and voice to the culturally diverse communities living in the outer southeast corridor of Melbourne to participate in, and contribute to, the environmental sustainability of their local communities,” she said.

“With the significant levels of cultural diversity present in the City of Greater Dandenong and Noble Park specifically, the community garden will provide opportunity for people from different cultural backgrounds to come together in a common interest setting.

“This supports the establishment of relationships outside of people’s immediate cultural groups supporting a diversification of people’s social capital and enhancing community connectedness and cohesion.

“Growing numbers of individuals and families are residing in apartments and units as a consequence of the increased cost of housing. Access to outdoor spaces for the purposes of growing vegetables or as activity are limited,” Ms Scarth said.

Ultimately, the garden will provide training support to engaged community members to build their capacity to develop and manage the garden space and manage the future direction and development of the expansive green space located at the site.

Initially, the aim of the project is to establish a level of community and stakeholder engagement, infrastructure and equipment which would deliver a community designed and managed community garden.

Working with local stakeholders and community groups, the program aims to establish a community co-design group to design the first stage of the community garden with a focus on purpose and lay out of the garden space.

Ultimately, the garden will provide training support to engaged community members to build their capacity to develop and manage the garden space and manage the future direction and development of the expansive green space located at the site.

A garden space specifically developed through a co-design process undertaken with local residents will provide opportunity for local residents living in accommodation with little or no garden to participate in activities otherwise not available to them.

In the initial stage of the project the immediate beneficiaries will be the local residents living in Noble Park. In subsequent stages of the project’s development the beneficiaries would widen to include students in local primary and secondary schools and residents in other parts of the LGA.