The veggies are green and plants flowering as volunteers celebrate an unofficial opening of the Lake Cathie Community Garden.
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The produce, decorative, sensory and bush food public garden is open and tended by volunteers who meet each Tuesday from 8.30am to 11am.
An official opening had been planned October this year, but had to be postponed, according to Brendan Woollam from the Hastings Neighbourhood Centre.
"We are back open however we have postponed the grand opening until March or April next year. There will be a better chance to get Costa (Georgiadis) up here and we can have more people, more stalls for the day," he said.
"It was becoming a real nightmare to organise the grand opening, it could have happened but wouldn't have been as good."
Membership is open for the garden and volunteers can participate in garden meetings, attend workshops and have access to fresh produce.
Mr Woollam said the project is quite self-sufficient and a surplus of produce is being distributed to the community.
"Produce goes to volunteers and distributed to Food Connect program at Laurieton on Friday. The garden itself is self-sustaining, gardeners get a sense of contribution and that's win-win with the Food Connect program," he said.
"It's just an overwhelming sense of satisfaction for the garden to finally come to fruition. It's an enormous joy for the community and the gardeners.
"We hope to start doing some street and community cooking for the community in future. That's something in the pipeline and we are going to be raising funds for that.
"We will also be holding events to bring the community together such as garden to table workshops, different workshops and activities to address social isolation, mental health and community participation."