Garden Week inspiration

Perth's Garden Week is in its 42nd year and runs for another few days. Organisers say the event fell away for a while and there wasn't much interest, but in the past three years they've had more and more exhibitors and now the crowds are coming back.

 

 Here's a peek of what's there:

 

 

 

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At the opening, the mayor of the Town of Cambridge, Simon Withers, spoke about how town planning is responsible, in part, for the amount of green space in the city. He said decreasing block sizes and councils that allow people to build massive houses on them, leaving no space for a lawn or a tree or two have created a 'heat island' in the city.

 

His council has banned synthetic lawn on verges and even stipulates what percentage of the space out the front of a house must be vegetated. He believes residents and councils must demand more green space and gardens in the planning process.

 

Mr Withers seemed very passionate about planting more street trees to create an air conditioning effect in the suburbs. After his talk we had a great conversation about town planning. We discussed the merits of not having walls at the front of your house, so it allows you to interact with your neighbours and bring the community feel back to your neighbourhood. I feel that by having my food garden out the front with no walls, it has allowed me to meet and strike up friendships with all my neighbours. That's something to think about for anyone planning or designing their front gardens. Maybe walling yourself away isn't the best idea. Oh, and go and plant a tree!

I met an inspiring woman... and you can too!

Yesterday, Garden Week opened in Perth. I got to meet a wonderful Australian - Stephanie Alexander:

Stephanie (I like to think we're on a first name basis now) is a keen kitchen gardener herself as well as being the author of a lot of cookbooks. But what I find most inspiring is her not-for-profit organisation that is teaching children the value of growing your own food and how to eat it. The Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Project was launched in 2004 and now involves 296 primary schools across Australia. In Western Australia 24 schools have joined the program and Stephanie said about 70 more in have put their hand up to take part.

 

Stephanie said her favourite place to be was in the garden. She had a bit of a poke about the Garden Week displays in between her engagements and she said what had caught her eye was the CSIRO limes. She was going to try to track some down in her home state of Victoria. I felt pretty chuffed that I have one of those limes. It is covered with fruit this year and I'm pretty excited to experiment with it in the kitchen when they ripen!

At Garden Week, the organisers set up this beautiful vege patch for Stephanie to use (below) and she'll be holding workshops with kids today.

Apart from my photo of Stephanie, I also took home some more native plants for my verge from the Carnaby's cockatoo display. I'm going to add couple of prostrate banksias, pimlea and more grevillia to the verge this afternoon.

I'll be back later with some more photos from garden week!