LAKESIDE COMMUNITY FOOD GARDENS - URBAN AGRICULTURE

Lakeside Community Food Gardens, in Orange Farm south of Johannesburg, came about as part of the Johannesburg City Parks and Zoo initiative to create opportunities for improving food security across the city.

The sliver of land between an existing park and a row of established houses was identified as the pilot project site for developing an urban agriculture model which can be easily adapted and manipulated for a variety of scenarios.

The site presented numerous constraints – from rocky soil contaminated with years of community dumping as well as the need to respect the farmers already farming on the site. In order to improve the soils and prevent waterlogging – uniform plots were created on a series of terraces – this served the dual purpose of allowing for fair distribution amongst community members and ease of maintenance.

Additional supporting infrastructure implemented on site includes raised water storage tanks, fed with borehole water – for gravity feed irrigation, nursery shade structures, plastic sheet tunnels, composting facilities as well as raised beds for differently abled individuals to use.

Information signage and universal access allow for this facility to become an educational hub for skills dispersal amongst the community members and younger generations.

In order to prevent the pure science from overwhelming the celebration of the everyday act of farming and the meaning it brings to people’s lives – a series of community squares were introduced at intervals throughout the site. These squares are shaded by Acacia karoo trees and invite community interaction while creating a welcome interruption to the uniformity of the vegetable plots.