From neglect to nurture.

I helped establish the Gabriel Road Area Project Association—GRAPA—as a founding director. At the time, we were responding to a neglected public space in Plumstead. None of us could have known exactly what it would become: a working food garden, a place where people gather and something the neighbourhood could feel proud of.

The space we could no longer ignore

During the Covid period, the road reserve around Gabriel and Bardia Roads had been badly neglected. There was overgrowth, refuse and illegal dumping. Some people were living there without proper sanitation. It affected the health and safety of everyone in and around the space.

It was never as simple as blaming the people who had found themselves there. The lack of care, facilities and coordinated support was also part of the problem. We had to hold two things together: the rights and dignity of every person involved, and the very real effect the situation was having on the surrounding community.

Eventually, residents reached the point where doing nothing was no longer an option.

Establishing GRAPA

The idea sounded simple: turn the neglected field into a community food garden. Making it happen was anything but simple.

GRAPA was established in 2020 by residents who wanted to bring safety, care and pride back into the area. The organisation was formally registered on 25 November 2020.

We hoped to reclaim approximately 3,000 square metres of neglected public land and turn it into a community food garden. The City of Cape Town gave consent for the temporary use of the land on 21 July 2021. That permission was an important step, but it was only the beginning.

We still needed fencing, water, irrigation and the basic infrastructure that makes a garden possible. It took almost two years of persistence before the first seeds went into the ground in 2023.

Then the garden began to grow

Vegetables were not the only things that grew there. The garden created work, volunteer opportunities, new relationships and a reason for people to spend time together.

Fresh produce is sold every Saturday. At the month-end market, local vendors and artisans join us. People may arrive for vegetables or something to eat, but they often stay for the conversation. For me, that is an important part of the story.

Volunteers work alongside the garden team, and schoolchildren have visited for job-shadowing. Where neighbours once saw an abandoned field, they now see food growing, flowers blooming and people looking after a shared place.

You could see the difference

The change was impossible to miss, and people began talking about the garden. Urban greening, food security and community connection can sound like three separate ideas on paper. At GRAPA, we have watched them grow from the same piece of ground.

Our slogan is “From Neglect to Nurture: Growing Hope, Together.” In this case, those words describe exactly what happened.

What this story means to me

I know this story from inside the work. I know the meetings, the engagements with the City, the waiting, the setbacks and the persistence that came long before the public saw a garden.

It taught me that community change very rarely begins under perfect conditions. Usually, it begins because a group of people decide they can no longer walk past a problem and hope somebody else will fix it.

GRAPA is very much a Cape Town story. It shows the difficult realities our city faces, but it also shows what can happen when neighbours decide to build something together.

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