Community Garden

Susan has volunteered for the last couple of years with a local charity called ECHO helping to build a community vegetable garden. ECHO has a range of activities that support local people with learning disabilities. The garden is one of these. Four ECHO participants and a small team of local gardeners have made what was a derelict piece of land into a pleasant and productive garden that is an asset for the whole community.

In the last few months, there have been vandalism and thefts from the garden. God knows what kind of people are doing this stuff, but everybody in the neighbourhood thinks it’s pretty disgusting.

Last night at about three in the morning, I was woken up by some noises in the street outside our house. I looked out the front window and saw two police cars and a couple of firemen rolling up their hoses. I could see lights and hear activity down the path from the end of our street leading to the garden. A little while later a fire engine backed out of the path and left the area.

This morning I walked down the path to see where the fire had been. Someone had burned down the garden shed, which in turn destroyed a number of evergreen trees on a neighbour’s side of the fence. The fire destroyed some of the vegetable beds and melted a plastic compost bin and a nearby plastic water butt. On my way back to tell Susan what had happened, a police car drove up and the cop called me over. He was here to find out who was in charge of the garden and write up the arson report; nice young Community Relations Officer.  Susan and I got him fixed up contact info for ECHO and away he went.

It was not a very good morning, but the cops around here are pretty good.