COMMUNAL GARDEN

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 27, 24 September 1931, Page 2

COMMUNAL GARDEN

The communal garden which has been started in Rotorua as a means of assisting unemployed residents of the town is a project which should have the unqualified support of the whole community. From every point of view the scheme is to he commended. The monetary value of its products may never be very great per capita of those who participate, but it has other values of far greater importance; values which will continue to be enjoyed both by the individuals concerned and by the community as a whole, perhaps long after the garden itself and its purpose have been fbrgotten. One of the unsatisfactory features of most schemes devised for the relief of economic distress is their undesirable effect on the self-reliance and selfrespect of those they are designed to help. Almost always there is about them a flavour, more or less pronounced, of charity. The communal garclen scheme is not subject to this objection. It is, in fact, the outcome of a spontaneous desire of a number of citizens whb, suffering economically through no fault of their own are anxious to help themselves. Further than this, the nature of the work itself and the conditions necessary to success in due time are such as can only increase those qualities in the participants which the unhappily more usual methods so freuently weaken, if they do not destroy. Many a man who cultivates his plot in the communal garden will takq from it a crop more valuable, more satisfying and having a more prolonged harvest season than the vegetables which are his immediate objeet and will be among the first fruits of his efforts.