Canterbury Community Gardens Association (INC)
Annual Report
September 2018 - August 2019
By connecting and sharing resources, ideas, love and compassion community gardens create health for ourselves, our children and the future of this wonderful planet. 
The purpose of the Canterbury Community Gardens Association has always been an ongoing commitment to connections made in the gardening community, awareness of the growing movement in growing and providing local, nutrious food and growing strong communities. The CCGA is here to support community gardeners and promote the purposeful and wonderfully diverse collection of community gardens. Our committee has had 9 very lively well attended meetings.
We joined with the Food Resilience Network and Southern Seed Exchange for the FESTA festival Seed to Plate event. Seeds were shared, we connected with gardens and received generous donations of produce which was transformed into edible delights for all the festival attendees. 
Cathy Alden provided a wonderful promotion of the CCGA at Necessary Traditions held at the Arts Centre. We entered a very quick design at the last hour for the pop up gardens competition in the Cathedral Square. Our design did not make it in though it showed the strength and dedication of our committee to promote community gardens.
Our Christmas Social Do was held at the beautiful Richmond Community Garden, a lovely time to relax and be together. The CCGA invited our new director of Christchurch Botanic Gardens and Parks Wolfgang Bopp and his partner Janet to meet community gardeners at New Brighton Community Gardens. It was a wonderful evening of free flowing information from everyone who attended, and uplifting to hear positive stories from the gardens represented there. Rachel Vogan and Waimea Nurseries organized fruit and berry plants to be donated on the evening. The CCGA had a stand promoting community gardens at the Avebury House and Richmond Community Garden Autumn Gala.
Hayley has done a wonderful job keeping our webpage up to date and producing the Newsline. We encourage you all to share events, newsletters and projects with us so our wider community can all connect with each other.
Community gardens in Canterbury are shining lights in the rapidly increasing positive, friendly people movement of growing healthy food and connected communities. To capture the value of community gardening is to look at our connections and what we provide. They connect, nourish, educate, inspire, feed our souls, and give purpose, satisfaction and beauty. 
By connecting and sharing resources, ideas, love and compassion community gardens create health for ourselves, our children and the future of this wonderful planet.