To complete the community food gardens created by citizens in Protea Village, 300 trees were planted in Suikerbossie Park on Saturday to create an urban forest alongside the vegetable patches in the 2-hectare public park.
The trees, a range of fruit and other indigenous trees were donated by the provincial department of agriculture, forestry and fisheries department in a bid to mitigate climate change.
This day marked the one-year birthday of the project that came to be in 2022 when residents Many Leibrand and her husband Frans Byleveld were looking at ways to promote food security in the wake of the covid pandemic.
After reaching out to ward councillor Grant Twigg with their plans, the couple formed the non-profit organisation Apple Tree and the rest is history.
The City of Cape Town signed a five-year lease with them to use the park for urban farming. Supporting the initiative the agriculture department came on board with R170 000 to drill a bore-hole to sustain the 1.1 hectare garden.
Provincial minister of agriculture Dr Ivan Meyer was in attendance to plant his own tree and to congratulate the community on the phenomenal success of the project that has caught the interest of students at the University of the Western Cape.
Appreciation
The students recently visited the garden and plans to use the same model in the Cape Flats.
Meyer hailed the project as a victory in active community citizenship where resident stook ownership of their green spaces.
Jan Odendaal of Green for Life who facilitated the cooperation between Apple Tree and the forestry department says he was honoured to be involved in a project of this scale.
“It is such a wonderful thing to see how the gardens and the park bring people together,” he said on the occasion.”
Since its inception the garden planted and tended to by 38 volunteer gardeners has yielded a crop big enough the feed 70 families.
Complete with beautiful, landscaped walkways and flower beds, an urban forest was the obvious thing to follow.
Fhulufhedzani Demana from the forestry department says every tree planted will take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and in exchange release oxygen.
“We are planting trees in parks school and community gardens to support greening and urban forestation. The importance of trees can never be underestimated,” she says.
Leibrand says communities need to recognise safe planting spaces in their areas and utilize it. “We realised this park could be used much better than it was in the past,” Leibrand says.
