We only recently heard about the idea of a crop swap - an event where back yard growers bring surplus produce to swap with other gardeners, thereby avoiding waste. It sounded like a great idea, so we decided to give it a go in our own suburb, under the name of a Garden Share. Being fairly spontaneous, we decided to hold it with only 2 weeks' notice. So - how did we put it together, and did anyone come? Read on to find out more! |
What's in a name? If you search online you will find quite a lot of information about crop swaps. It turns out the idea was the brainchild of gardener and zero wate advocate Laurie Green, who launched a Facebook group back in 2015 for her community in Sydney. Crop swaps can be organised as in-person gatherings or individuals can adverstise to swap specific produce in online forums or communities. For me, the word crop swap conjours up the idea of predominantly swapping food. I liked the idea of opening the event up to more than just swapping edible produce. In our case we suggested people could bring seeds, seedlings, and plants (including ornamentals as well as edibles), so I felt the word 'garden' was a bit more inclusive. We settled on the word 'share' on the assumption that not everyone would want to swap everything over, kilo for kilo. For example, we had too many apples to know what to do with - we weren't looking for an equivalent amount of other produce to the apples, because that would have been too much for us as well! The word 'share' therefore seemed more appropriate. And so a 'Garden Share' it became! |
What to swap/share
At ours we suggested three categories:
- Fresh edible garden produce - e.g. herbs, veg, fruit, eggs
- Preserved produce - e.g. jam, pickles, ferments, dried goods
- Plant related - e.g. seeds, seedlings, tubestock, plants, cuttings, flowers
One thing thats usually discouraged from a crop swap is any produce that will spoil. In a community park there's no refrigeration, so things like meat, fish or dairy are a bit risky.
How to get the word out
We wrote up a little flyer with instructions on date, location and what to bring and distributed it around the neighbourhood. With only 100 flyers printed, we did focus on those houses where it looked like the occupants were interested in gardening!
I also posted about it on our local Buy Nothing group, as well as the Canberra Homesteaders group - both of these are Facebook groups that I (Cally) am a member of. In addition we texted the details to any of our friends in the area that we know would be interested. With only 2 weeks' notice, we weren't expecting it to be huge - and to be honest I was pleased to keep it to a manageable size, especially as we were newbies to the whole thing.
Facilities
One of the big questions is where to hold an in-person garden share or crop swap. We are fortunate to live very close to a neighbourhood park. This allowed us to provide the location of the event in all of our invitations, without having to share our actual street address (like most people, I'm not super keen to publish our address onto Facebook!). However, being so close to the park meant that if anyone needed an emergency toilet visit, we were able to oblige. We also invited people wander through our garden for inspiration if they wanted to - Jeremy took a few tours around explaining everything we've been growing and what our goals are.
So, if you live near an underutilised urban space (there are a great many in Canberra!) then maybe a garden share is just the event to bring some life back into it! It gets communities together, builds relationships and connections, and gets people out doors and using our parks - which is, of course, what they were designed for!
On the other hand, if you just want to invite your friends and close neighbours, then there's no reason to not invite them over to your own home or garden. No need to make these events too big - a large number of small events is probably more effective than a few big events where you don't really get much chance to chat with fellow gardeners!
How to run it
We just let people bring things and lay them out on tables or on the ground. We broadly grouped similar items together - produce all went onto a rug (plus a couple of wheelbarrows contained pumpkins) while the plants were grouped together, mostly on the grass.
It's an honesty system - we didn't give out tokens or weigh anything - it was much more relaxed and casual than that. Once enough people had arrived, we gave a very quick welcome and shared some basic instructions - to the effect that we share what we can, and only take what we need. At the end, any unclaimed items were taken back by those who had provided them.
Would we do it again?
Absolutely! We had so much positive feedback - lots of participants were keen to do it again! So, we plan to run more of them - probably from spring through to autumn each year! Sometimes a gardening life can be quite isolating and solitary, so I very much enjoyed the excuse to catch up with friends and meet new people as well.
In fact, while avoiding garden and food waste is a brilliant outcome from a garden share, its other main function is to bring people together. With everyone being so busy, under pressure at work, racing around getting kids to various activities, it can be easy to never meet people in your local area. Events like our little garden share help to change that, so that we can forge connections and friendships in our neighbourhoods.
I can't wait to get to know more keen gardeners in our area - what about you?
Do you think you might give a garden share a go in your neighbourhood too?