Personally I think it is too much in the time available (but it could work).
From what I’ve heard there is considerable competition for grant money. Kirilpa (West End) put in an application and they went to a lot of trouble preparing it including a very well-done process of collecting letters of support from other groups. We’re not sure whether they were successful or not (views both ways) but we do know a lot aren’t.
So I guess this is saying it is a skill needs to be done well and to gather our support and get very clear what it is we want. The Gap took about a year and did their homework well checking out potential sites liaising with local Councillors and working through potential objections then preparing a design and the proposal. There was quite a large group who met regularly fortnightly for most of a year working and talking and planning together. They are now very successful (18 of the 30 garden plots are already spoken for and they are already thinking in terms of waiting lists and applying for more land) but this is after steady preparation and planning.
I think we’d be much better putting our efforts at this stage into getting a clear group of at least (say) 10 people who are definitely interested and actively turning up to meetings and visiting sites and checking out where a garden could be and thinking about the skills and resources needed.
There are lots of good examples of gardens we can visit to get ideas and learn from as a growing group and we need to identify people in The Grove who are interested. There are probably lots and lots but at present we’ve only identified a starting kernel. Let’s give a lot of the others a chance to come out of the woodwork and get involved too so we have lots of energy and enthusiasm to make it a real success.