Gardeners from almost 20 different cultural backgrounds will be able to keep cultivating fresh fruits, veggies and flowers thanks to a 10-year lease approved by Council this month.
Townsville Community Garden has been running for 25 years at Railway Estate, with 80 gardeners and about 30 volunteers maintaining the 1.6-hectare space.
Garden secretary John Eckersley said the board and gardeners were thrilled to have their lease renewed for another decade.
"We lease this land from Council and we have about 57 individual plots, and in total we have about 80 gardeners," Mr Eckersley said.
"Across the garden we grow an incredible variety of foods and fruits and flowers and herbs. A fair part of it is quite distinctive to the cultures who are represented here. We have people from 19 different ethnic or cultural backgrounds within the garden.
"We have quite a lot of Pacific Island folks, people from PNG, a Ukrainian refugee family, a couple of Chinese families. Their foods that they grow, when the gardens started back in the early 2000s, you could not get those foodstuffs in the shops around Townsville, so that was a substantial motivation for why the garden was started in the first place.
"We have a bunch of folks from Tokelau. They were here from the start, and when we started they couldn't get the things that they had grown up eating. So for them this really very important, culturally, for them to try to keep the background of their culture going in connection with growing foodstuffs."
Mr Eckersley keeps a plot with his wife Wendy and said they had an abundance of plants growing in the fertile riverside soil.
"My wife and I did a plant count about a week and a half ago, and we gave up counting formally at 65. We have cucumbers, tomatoes, spinaches of many sorts, spring onions, we have a lychee tree, sweet potatoes, kohl rabi, asparagus. Our main growing period is from Easter to September. But we found that summer beans, eggplants, rosellas and spinach, they all grew well during summer. You just have to keep the water up. So you can grow things all year round," he said.
"This is the best soil for growing stuff that you could probably find. Most of Townsville is hard clay and it's a hard job to grow stuff, but here it's fabulous."
Mr Eckersley said there was constant interest from community members to have a plot of their own.
"Spare plots don't necessarily come around really easily. Sometimes we have a few that we can provide, but we do have a waiting list and we're always happy to welcome more interest," he said.
Divisional councillor Brady Ellis said Council was proud to support Townsville Community Garden through the organisation's Community Lease Program, which supports more than 200 local community groups, sporting clubs and non-profits.
"Council has done a peppercorn lease for the garden, and I'm really proud to say that councillors voted unanimously last week to support the Townsville Community Garden for another 10 years," Cr Ellis said.
"It's 1.6 hectares of land, and it costs the Townsville Community Garden a dollar a year to lease it. I'm really proud that we're able to continue that for another decade.
"This is so good for mental health, it's so good for people's finances to grow their own food, it's so rewarding to know what you've put in the ground and you can feed your family and friends. This is beautiful fresh food that comes straight out of the ground that people have made with their own hands, and there's nothing more beautiful than that.
"Council loves partnering with people that can take something and make it better, and that's exactly what the Townsville Community Garden has done. It's so good for the community."
To get involved with the Townsville Community Garden or to join the waitlist, visit their website.
