St Lucia Community Garden

 Chasing substantial money for eight Lower Terrace Raised Beds

We are looking at needing to find up to $2500 for each Raised Bed we install (to the new BCC Standard). One way to get that done is to bludge major donations of materials, tools, labour and so on from everyone we can find, which is going well and will bring down the unit price a fair bit. Another is to stage construction to allow the donors to recover a bit and then ask them again. A third is to achieve Incorporated Association status, which opens up a lot more sources of funds, both private, charitable, business and government, in time to get more done this year. So far we have we applied for one specific Raised Bed grant via the Lord Mayor of Brisbane:

We asked for $2500, and were approved in outline last week, and this week we submitted another application to our State MP Michael Berkman for substantial funds as well:

We hope these sources plus some of our own ingenuity and in-kind contributions (like $700-worth of MicroShade arsenic-free timber sleepers from Bunnings Indooroopilly) will build us three to four beds of our own commissioning and construction. 

Meanwhile, Walter Taylor Ward Councillor James Mackay has also agreed to consider our applications for rather smaller amounts to cover a second 1000 litre IBC water tank from Tilkey, and several sets of metal shelves for our tool shed.

Much more importantly, Cllr Mackay has also agreed to prioritise funding our Raised Bed shortfall enough to get us to eight Beds (via the next round of what used to be known as the Suburban Initiative Fund but is now the Lord Mayor's Community Fund - the funding that paid BCC Asset Services to construct our first two Terraces in 2018/19 and 2019/20). 

The same source paid for four new Community Garden Raised Beds in Toowong and Chapel Hill from next year's allocations. That funding stream won't be available for us until after July 1 and Bed delivery will take some months more (and be paid at full price), so we are keen to get on with building our own Beds asap.