Garden Smart Workshops

These highly successfully workshops have been run by the REROC Waste Forum since 2007 with the aim of showing residents in the region how to use less water in their gardens and how to garden more sustainably.

The workshops are designed and delivered by well-known, ABC Radio Riverina gardening personality Kerry Geale. Riverina ABC Radio promotes the workshops as part of a sponsorship arrangement which has included some live feeds from workshop venues.

Just over 1,500 people have attended the workshops, which are organised locally by each of the REROC member councils. The 2007 workshops concluded with a stand at the Wagga Wagga Garden and Leisure Expo, which ran for 2 days in late October. Angus Stewart from ABC Television's Gardening Australia ran the workshops in conjunction with Kerry Geale and this proved to be very successful.

Topics covered in the workshops included: composting, irrigation systems, utilising worms in the garden, companion planting, water wise plants, alternatives to pesticides and garden design. REROC has produced promotional materials for the events, with each participant that attended the workshop received a non-woven recyclable bag, gardening diary, pencil and further information on composting and being water smart.

A limited number of workshops were held in the REROC region in 2008, however in a deal negotiated with Murray ROC and RivROC the materials developed by REROC were used to run the same workshops across western Riverina and in the Murray region as well. Again Kerry Geale conducted the workshops which were attended hundreds of people. 

The workshops will run again in 2009 with the first one being in held in Tumut at the end of the July.