Today the Rev Antony Barraclough will have to tell locals that All Saints' Petersham's church planting venture has been a "disaster'.
The plants in question are vegetables, and the venture is the community garden All Saints built last summer in partnership with Seaberth Boarding House next door to the church and Petersham's Baptist Community Services op shop.
In the last few weeks, All Saints have discovered the plants are not growing, and have had to call in experts from the local TAFE to investigate.
This collaboration in itself has turned the setback into a "positive" says Mr Barraclough.
"What's good about this is there's now more community involvement " we're using the TAFE's advice to help improve the soil, which we thought was premium but they have discovered has rubble in it and the wrong PH," he says.
Mr Barraclough will break the news at a free barbeque lunch put on weekly for boarding house residents with the aim of encouraging them to stay and do some gardening with members from All Saints' and Petersham Baptist Church.
Mr Barraclough hopes boarding house residents, op shop representatives and church members will seize the opportunity to start afresh.
"The goal is to say to them "Righteo guys, back to square one with the soil! Here are your shovels, let's do it together'," he says.
Garden yields spiritual fruit
To date, the community garden, established with the help of a grant from Marrickville Council, has been enthusiastically supported by the boarding house.
Seaberth's manager Brett Phillips says the garden will help residents, many of whom struggle with drug and alcohol addiction.
"It's a way to address the isolation of the boarders within the premises, to be able to get them outdoors to interact with other people" to supplement diet, because they generally have a poor diet" and to give them a different view on life, to be able to nurture something from start to finish."
There have already been scarecrow building and garden naming competitions, and a chicken coop has also been added.
"The intention is to mix church people with the local community," says Mr Barraclough. "The boarding house residents won't walk in our church doors so this is a different way to witness " it gives them a reason to be on site and for us to get to know them."
Already, All Saints is hoping to meet with one resident who has expressed interest in doing Simply Christianity, and another resident has started coming to church and is voluntarily helping with the gardening.
Mr Barraclough says once the garden yields its first crop of vegetables, the goal is to run informal cooking demonstrations using the produce, and making salads and stirfries to go with their weekly free barbeque lunch.
