Sprout Community Garden

Sprout Community Garden is a project of Mind Australia, who run it to help people with mental health problems. It’s located next to Thornbury train station, and consists of a sprawling garden of fruit, vegetables, herbs, and community space. Each Thursday from 1−4pm their produce/​plant stand is open, and once a month (first Thursday, 3−7pm) they run a community market which, in addition to their usual fruit and veg and plants, included preserves, crafts, baked goods, more gardening things, worm farm stuff (farms, worm juice), an organic sausage sizzle, and more.
I went this afternoon and found it pretty busy, with lots of kids doing activities, people playing music, and numerous stalls. I bought some organic vegies, some brick-​oven-​baked sourdough from a new co-​operative bakery that’s starting up, a sorrel plant for my garden, and a necklace. You don’t go to a market like this for its prices, but despite that, I thought the prices were pretty reasonable, especially for the quality of the food I got.
The only negatives I would mention are that a lot of the plants/​seedlings for sale from the Sprout stand don’t seem to be all that healthy, and many of them aren’t well labelled. I bought my sorrel from a different organic garden stand, where the seedlings seemed much nicer.
Apart from that, I just wish the garden was open all day every day for people to go hang out in and/​or get their hands dirty. (As it is, you have to go through a complicated volunteer signup process to help them out. Understandable, given that you’ll be working with kids and disabled people.) In any case, I’m going to try and make it back regularly on Thursdays from now on.