Bulawayo's latest community garden to provide produce in 6 weeks time

ZDDT, in conjunction with a Scottish partner, donated a 30m by 25m fence, drip irrigation kit and tools to equip the garden located in Bulawayo's Central Business District ward.

See: Initial clearing of the land, and a visit by Australia's ambassador to the plot

This community has often been shunned by other Civil Society Organisation for various reasons.

The garden is a pilot project and will be commissioned soon. The beneficiaries have however begun working hard, tilling the land, preparing beds and planting their horticultural crops.

Their first vegetables will ripen and be harvested in 6 weeks.

The garden will enhance the livelihood of the beneficiaries through the results of training to improve agri-techniques, small business management and marketing of their produce.

The members said they want to fully utilise this golden opportunity and resource availed to them and set a positive example to inspire the rest of the city.

They said they wish to prove to the other residents that the key to success is determination, commitment and hard work.

“This garden is a blessing to us because, as a community, we had nothing to help us. Now we have got something that we are doing to help ourselves. I can already see the progress and I can tell that we are going to excel to the extent of selling our produce. This project will sustain us and will give more funds to embark on more  projects like poultry and piggery. We thank ZDDT for giving us this opportunity because it is a platform to improve our lives and those of our children, ”said Mr Thembani Ncube who is one of the beneficiaries.

The beneficiaries said the project comes at a most opportune time and it is already working as a unifying factor in the Ward.

“This garden is empowering us and giving us knowledge because it is where we are going to learn. Apart from economically empowering us, the garden is teaching us to live and work well together as a community. It is teaching us how to approach and deal with challenges, come up with positive solutions and to implement the solutions and move on with life, ” said Mrs Martha Woods, another member.

“I am very happy about this garden. I am empowered by this garden. We can work together as men and women and try to help ourselves. We would love to thank ZDDT and Mr Spooner for donating this garden to us,” concurred a fellow beneficiary, Pamela Mackay.

This garden endowment is inline with ZDDT’s objective of empowering the communities and resultantly improving the residents’ livelihoods through self-help projects. In a bid to realise this objective, the Trust has in the past donated garden toolkits to all the 29 Wards of Bulawayo and closely monitors the progress in these nutritional gardens.