Eden of the East
The reset took two days. Dead trees came out. Old garden beds were cleared. Fresh soil arrived, and new growing areas began to take shape behind the Churchill Hub.
That working bee in 2025 gave Churchill Community Garden a practical new beginning. Disaster Relief Australia volunteers joined local contributors to do the heavy work. In the same year, the garden became part of Churchill Neighbourhood Centre, placing its next chapter inside an organisation built around local participation.
The change is visible in ten self-watering vegetable beds set at an accessible height. They put planting and tending within reach of more people and turn an open invitation into something concrete: here is a bed, here is the soil, here is a useful job to do.
A greenhouse adds another step to the cycle, bringing seed collection, germination and preparation for the season ahead into the garden. The plan for the garden’s three-level embankment gives each level a role, with flowers, vegetables and native plants bringing colour, food-growing and habitat into the same shared place.
The garden has been shaped by many kinds of contribution. Churchill Men’s Shed built outdoor furniture. Kurnai students prepared meals during the rejuvenation. Volunteers cleared, carried, planted and kept returning. Each contribution answered a real need, and together they made the garden more useful.
That matters because participation begins more easily when the first step is visible. A new gardener learns through one task. An experienced gardener passes on knowledge that would otherwise stay at home. A family, school or community group sees how growing works across a season. The garden turns individual effort into a place the wider community can share.
Colour has a job here. Flowers bring life to the planting plan. Vegetables mark the seasons. Native plants connect the garden to local habitat. Seen through Eden of the East Foundation’s Power of Colour lens, the result is a vivid form of community infrastructure: nature, knowledge and useful work brought into everyday life.
It also gives Churchill a contemporary Garden City expression. Green space becomes most valuable when people have a reason to know it, care for it and return to it. The garden offers all three.
Every raised bed holds the result of one season’s work. Every seedling points towards the next. What keeps Churchill Community Garden growing is the simplest and strongest part of the story: people come back.
Power of Colour
Colour people can grow together
At Churchill, flowers, vegetables, native planting and shared work place colour inside everyday community life. The Power of Colour Awards celebrate the colour and pride that gardens and shared effort bring into Latrobe. This is Eden of the East Foundation's editorial connection, not evidence that Churchill Community Garden formally participates in the Awards.
Explore the Power of Colour Awards