Tag Archives: Gardening

Native animals can make excellent neighbours. Blue banded bees pollinate our vegetable gardens. Microbats eat up to 1,200 mosquitoes a night and powerful owls keep rodents at bay. But could we go one step further, and change our homes to invite native animals in as housemates?

Chris Oddie is a passionate member of the Lithgow Environment Group (LEG). With other members of LEG, she became increasingly concerned about the growing number of invasive Indian Myna birds proliferating in Lithgow. Mynas are listed among 100 of the world's worst invasive species by the World Conservation Union.

Pollinators are critical for life on earth. As we face a biodiversity crisis in which we’re losing plants and animals at an alarming rate, the Rotary Club of Blackheath and Planting Seeds have collaborated on the B&B Highway pollinator program.

'Middle Earth' is a remarkable off-grid paradise in the Kanimbla Valley, created over many decades by Hans and Tillie Coster. What was once a degraded grazing property has been regenerated, with its underground 'Hobbit Hall' built to survive all weather extremes.

Maligned through the ages for their association with witchcraft, disease, drug use and poisonings, the fungus kingdom is gaining due credit thanks to ecologists, photographers and foragers.

Mushroom season may be over, but edible mushrooms are just one kind of fungi, as Tracie McMahon found out when she attended a mycology workshop run by Lithgow Oberon Landcare and Maldhan Ngurr Ngurra Lithgow Transformation Hub.

Dr Megan Halcroft, a native bee specialist and her husband Steven Ruttley, are certified Bee Friendly Farmers in Hampton. We look at what this certification means and the choices Megan has made to ensure their sheep stud is bee-friendly as well as environmentally and economically sustainable.

Chantelle Cambridge recently presented the final in a series of gardening talks hosted by Lithgow Library Learning Centre. Standing in the shade of fifty-year-old elms in a flowery white dress, she was Instagram perfect, but the journey that led her here would have flattened many.

What goes on under all those poly-tunnels at Lithgow & District Community Nursery? Get the low down here.

Mary's Garden is a catalyst for growing community, connection to nature, an understanding of history and food security.