1. PICAL Community Garden, Cowes

A community garden that partners with the food pantry providing fresh food and healthy meals

Veggies 🥦 Berries 🍓 Fruits 🍋 Nuts 🌰

Meet the gardeners and their garden

Relocated from their previous Church Street site, the volunteer community gardeners have managed to successfully transplant many of the fruit trees, the garden shed and most of the garden beds. Bordering the Blue Gum reserve, the new community garden has provided much more growing space, as well as a blank canvas for the creativity and garden design skills of the dedicated band of gardeners. New volunteers are warmly welcomed, with the group meeting up to three mornings a week.

Come to see, learn and be inspired!

This is a great example of growing food for a worthy purpose – fresh, seasonal produce is regularly harvested and provided to PICAL’s Community Pantry and Kitchen which, in turn, provides home-cooked and nutritious meals for the local Food Relief program.
Some of the vegetables beds have sloping sides, making them easily accessible by gardeners in wheelchairs. The timber-lined garden shed is a great space for raising seeds, drying herbs and sharing a morning tea and cake with the other gardeners.
After being inspired by the Council’s free Garden Gems workshops in 2024, some of which were held in the PICAL garden, the gardeners are now building a children’s play area and a permaculture lawn under the border of fruit trees.
A sensory herb garden wheel is also under construction, providing a peaceful and aromatic space for both gardeners and visitors to sit and have a rest.
Fruits, nuts and berries in this garden include: two-way pears, apples, nectarines, apricots, peaches, olives, lemons, oranges, mandarins, strawberries, raspberries, banana palms and chestnuts.

Parking and accessibility

Turn into the driveway off Settlement Road and there is ample parking in front of the garden. This garden has good accessibility with wide flat pathways, and it also has public toilets.