Norton Plaza Community Kitchen Garden

As someone with little to no gardening knowledge/​skills/​motivation, with tight purse-​strings and an appetite for fresh food, I love Norton Plaza Community Kitchen Garden.
I often thought that the ‘Community Kitchen Garden’ signs around Norton Plaza were simply alluding to the couple of planter boxes sitting outside Coles. Then, one day, I decided to follow the signs up the lift to the Level 2 rooftop, where I stumbled upon something lovely.
Through the doors and on to the roof I found an open space filled with many more planter boxes full of fresh herbs, fruit & vegetables. Looking around for ‘the catch’ or waiting for someone to shoo me away from this utopian secret garden I wasn’t meant to have stumbled upon, all I found was the inscription «Enjoy, respect and care for our plants as you would your own.» When I hesitated still, a man with gardening gloves smiled at me with the hint of a chuckle (pretty sure my mouth had dropped open a little). «Go for it,» he said and nodded towards the boxes of parsley and thyme.
Catering to kids, this would be a fantastic place to bring your children shopping and indeed to let them enjoy the process of picking fresh produce. It’s a fantastic initiative to get kids interested in gardening and to promote kids enjoying and even cooking healthy meals.
This place is great if like many inner city houses, you don’t have a backyard fit for a garden but like to enjoy fresh home-​grown produce — for free. Because what do they want in return? Nothing. The Norton Plaza Community Kitchen Garden is made for the locals, by the locals. They just ask that you make the most of this fantastic commodity and that, if you have the time, you give a little lovin’ back in return, in the form community working bees or by joining their Gardening Volunteer Club.