The park is located at the bottom of Dundalk Road, and was once a derelict piece of pavement until Prince Baloyi, a gardener from an adjacent property transformed it.
Though the landmark is well known in the neighbourhood, members of Greenside Shul noted that it was in need of a revamp. As a result volunteers from the shul spent a day planting and putting together a community vegetable garden in the park.
Nina Cohen, vice chair of Greenside Shul said, “[The shul] is trying to be more involved in the immediate community.”
She said in line with the Jewish festival of Tu b’Shvat in February, the initiative falls into the greater Greening Greenside project run by the shul in conjunction with Mina Lopato Nursery School.
Cohen explained the festival is also known as the Festival of the Trees and is an opportunity to promote environmental awareness. She said the community vegetable garden was an apt and small-scale project befitting the ethos of the festival.
Vegetables grown in the community garden are freely available to members of the public, with the sign ‘help yourself, but leave some for others’, posted above it. Cohen mentioned that she had read about a few pavement gardens which had inspired the initiative.
The Rosebank Killarney Gazette in the week ending 27 February, the article Vegetable Garden of Goodwill, was published on Parktown North resident Denise O’Callaghan who began a pavement garden initiative several years ago, and inquired about whether there were other members of the community following suit.
