Tag Archives: Gardening

Blackheathen Bianca Nogrady is an award-winning freelance science journalist, author and broadcaster. She reflects on conversations from this year’s Blue Mountains Writers’ Festival and shares what she and her family are doing towards planetary health.

The Rotary Club of Blackheath has launched a Birds, Bees, Butterflies and Bats Pollinator Project. With 65% of the world’s flowering plants, including crops and trees, requiring some form of animal pollination, helping pollinators is critical to planetary health. Club President Sherlie McMillian explains how we can support pollinators in Blackheath, the Blue Mountains and beyond.

Bill Grattan from Bay Tree Nursery. After a light lunch there will be a potting and propagation workshop. $5.

Julie Paterson and Manda Kaye’s home in Blackheath was designed with bushfire in mind and they are now preparing for the bushfire season. They’ve also moved to renewables and Julie is working on collaborative community art projects that embody the philosophy of re-using and re-making.

Hamish Dunlop visits Megalong Restaurant and Lot 101 Farm in the Megalong Valley. He talks with Chef Colin Barker and Farm Manager Mark Wells about their philosophy of sustainability, being self-sufficient and reducing the time between pasture and plate.

Planetary Health Initiative writer Hamish Dunlop talks to Amy St Lawrence from Blue Mountains City Council’s Healthy Waterways Team. Amy explains what she’s doing at her home to collect and use water. She also talks about how her rain garden reduces run-off during and after rainfall.

Keith Brister is on a mission. He and his fellow Bushcare volunteers spent years “achieving the impossible”, protecting Blackheath’s stunning natural bushland, only to see the weeds return when COVID restrictions limited Bushcare. But Keith did not despair. Instead, he asked what else could be done, and set about doing it.

Hamish Dunlop interviews Deborah Wells in the Blackheath Campbell Rhododendron Gardens. She shares how a group of passionate and dedicated volunteers have created a community space that is a haven for all species, and how they've helped it recover from drought, fire, flood and pandemic.

  In March this year, Japanese journalist Harumi Hayakawa wrote a piece for the Japanese publication Asahi Weekly in which she explained why the terrifying Australian fires of December 2019 actually made her like the Blue Mountains even more.     In her article she described the many ways the community came together during and after the fires and how, …

To grow a long-term productive and abundant veggie garden you need to make sure your soil is rich and alive and continually fed and replenished. This supports plant growth and allows for repeated cropping within a healthy ecosystem. One way to do this is to encourage more worms to be part of that system. Charles Darwin said: “It may be …