A luscious community space filled with leafy greens and pockets of colourful flowers, the backdrop a vibrant garden inspired mural.

The Precinct’s community garden was simply an idea eight months ago, but now thanks to our green thumb troops dedicating more than 700 hours building, growing and tending to the area - this is now what you see.

Dani Poulden of Blakeview, an avid young gardener, hasn’t looked back since she came across a call out to join the army of volunteers in developing the garden.

“To be gardening with other people who enjoy gardening makes it just that more fun,” Dani said. “It’s nice to have a similar interest to those around you and you’ll be constantly learning from them.”

Dani has spent four to eight hours per week helping grow and adding new features to this community space in Smithfield Plains.

“They are always offering workshops, so there is always opportunities to learn more,” she said. “That was what I was looking for, to learn firsthand how to look after and grow my own garden.”

Each Monday and Friday gardening workshops are offered at The Precinct from learning how to grow seedlings to skills in pruning, soil management and creating your own compost.

Dani’s tip on how to learn more about gardening is simple, “come join a community garden”.

“It’s the quickest and most efficient way to learn the things you want to learn,” Dani said. “If you ask someone, you are going to get five different answers back and they are all going to tell you different ways you can do it on different budgets. Buy second hand, go to your local timber yards and get their off cuts if you want to build garden beds, you don’t have to buy expensive materials.”

Where you’ll find Dani in the garden is at the sturdy garden bed filled with vibrant purple cauliflower when in season.

“We had purple cauliflower and they were absolutely gorgeous – I have never grown purple cauliflower. We’ve ate them now and they were delicious, but that was my favourite.”

If you are interested in joining our green thumb troops at the community garden in Smithfield Plains call on 8256 0372 or keep up-to-date on the latest workshops on offer by visiting The Precinct’s Facebook page.