Autumn April! We Thank You!
We "log on" the site, boost our funds, talk to council, brush up our skills and give thanks to some wonderful people and local businesses!
Onkaparinga Council have placed a number of large logs around the wetlands area where visitors to the wetlands can sit and enjoy the surroundings, watch the bird life or just meditate in a quiet place as they sort out the problems of the world.
Bunnings BBQ
Our third BBQ fundraiser will be on Saturday 4th June from 8.30am to 4.30pm at Seaford Bunnings.
A huge thank you to our volunteers who did an amazing job at our last BBQ on Saturday 3rd April. We had a slow start to the day but later, sausages were flying off the hot plate! We sold 400 sausages on the day and with drinks and donations made a very useful $900. Heaps of thanks to our chefs Rory, Julia and Tony and to Narrah, Dino, Ellen, Lisa (great aprons!), Kaarin, and Jack. Thanks also to Pacemakers quartet for the musical accompaniment and to Brighton Jetty Bakery for donating the great bread.
If you can help on the next one, please send an email with your contact details and BBQ in the subject line and we will get in touch to match you with a suitable shift.
Our email is seafordcg@gmail.com
We thank our members and now is a great time for you to join!
During the planning stages of the garden project, 13 people so far have joined as members of the Seaford Wetlands Community Garden. We expect this to grow dramatically once construction begins so check out the website and join now. Members will have access to the community garden plots, activities and workshops as well as being eligible to rent a raised garden bed. Membership is only $20/year for a household and a raised bed rental will be $80/year (including mulch, compost and water). If you have already joined or if you join before 30 June this year your membership will remain current until 1 July 2023 and you will be given priority for an individual raised garden bed.
Our design ideas start to take shape - on paper at least
One of the key concepts of the garden design is to retain the dirt path that runs from Seaford Rd through the lease area. This path is used frequently by the public and visitors, residents and employees at Eldercare and will form the main approach to the Community Garden area with a fruit and nut orchard, community garden areas, a sensory garden, a members' garden area with up to 40 raised garden beds, and an edible native plant area.
If you have ideas on other things to include please send us an email.
We revisit our first aid skills
Nicole and Wayne have updated their Senior First Aid qualifications recently thanks to Landscape SA which provided the funding for the course.
Coming up
Nicole and Rory are organising a Planting Day in the Seaford wetlands on Sunday 26th June. More details in the next newsletter and on our Facebook page but please keep this day free.
And while we are on the subject of planting, a huge thank you to Bunnings Seaford and its Activities Organiser Briana Mason for the donation of 144 Sheoaks - Allocasuarina Littoralis and Cunninghamiana to be planted in the wetlands. There are a few of these in the wetlands already but this will be an amazing injection of a wonderful Australian native tree highly adapted to Australian conditions.
Our Seaford Wetlands Community Garden Committee
We're sad to tell you that the person responsible for the Seaford Wetlands Community Garden concept, Jack Clarke has decided to handover the reins and concentrate on his own career and young family. Jack has given us literally hundreds of hours to bring the project from a dream in May '21 to near reality with a $61K Grassroots grant from Green Adelaide and great support for the project amongst key stakeholders in local and state government and in the Seaford community. He will keep in touch with our progress and offer advice as required. We also welcome new member Rory Fitzsimons to the committee and look forward to working with him and our new Chair Julia Hayden to build the garden and improve the biodiversity of the wetlands.
Our committee is Julia Hayden (Chair), Kaarin Wilkinson, Nicole Fickling, Tony Watkin, Lisa Schuyler, Zoe Brooks, Owen Symes, Rory Fitzsimons and Wayne Good. If you have any questions or ideas please contact Julia or Nicole via Facebook or our website. The next committee meeting is scheduled for Wed 18th May.
This project was seeded by
The Seaford Wetlands Community Garden is seeded by Green Adelaide.
You will find some excellent gardening advice on the Green Adelaide website
and in its newsletter online - just click on the link above for many useful resources