#CleanYourHood: Garden will help feed community

REGENERATION: Manenberg activist Roegshanda Pascoe is getting ready to revive the community garden on the corner of Manenberg Avenue and Sabie Road. Picture: Nidha Narrandes

REGENERATION: Manenberg activist Roegshanda Pascoe is getting ready to revive the community garden on the corner of Manenberg Avenue and Sabie Road. Picture: Nidha Narrandes

Published Jul 28, 2017

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Cape Town - Love for her community is the motivation behind Manenberg activist Roegshanda Pascoe’s setting an example and reviving a community garden destroyed during a 2013 gang war.

Situated on the corner of Manenberg Avenue and Sabie Road, the damaged garden consisting of indigenous plants is being dug up to make way for a vegetable garden for the benefit of the community, Pascoe said.

“It is out of love for the community of Manenberg that we want to make this garden,” she said.

Some of the indigenous plants will be kept, as a reminder of the old garden and before the plot was turned into a dump site.

“The garden is going to be of benefit to the community. We are planning to grow spinach, celery, carrots, cabbages, cauliflower and dhania (coriander) - vegetables people eat. The vegetables will be given to local organisations for their soup kitchens,” she said.

Benches and tables were being planned so the elderly could also enjoy the garden. “We will make food here in the garden for the children. The community around here have all agreed to take care of the garden which will be fenced in, so that there can be control of when people can pick vegetables,” said Pascoe.

Resident Faiza Hendricks said, “Before the garden was destroyed, we cleaned and looked after it. People got married out of this garden. They took pictures here and still have all the albums. We had braais for the children here and they could play in safety and we could watch over them.

“It really was a beautiful garden and we will make it beautiful again,” said Hendricks, who works on the teams of women employed by the city to take care of their neighbourhood.

Pascoe said that there had been consultation with the community and residents who live close to the garden had volunteered to help take care of it.

REGENERATION: Manenberg activist Roegshanda Pascoe is getting ready to revive the community garden on the corner of Manenberg Avenue and Sabie Road. Picture: Nidha Narrandes

Cape Argus

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