10 actions for a climate wise garden

Edwina Robinson is a landscape architect who has designed hundreds of Australian landscapes with an environmental focus. 

She's also a Microforest Maker and built public dense native microforests in NSW and the ACT.

Edwina's primary concern is how we adapt to a hotter, drier future and continue to build gardens that delight owners and wildlife. 
She's also anxious that many authorities say to deal with climate change we must plant low water use plants. She regards this as an overly simplistic approach to a complex issue. 

Edwina's garden is her happy place. She loves getting her hands dirty and experiments with two gardens on the Far South Coast of NSW at:

Moruya, NSW her home garden on a loamy soil is 2000sqm or 1/2 acre was started in 2016. It includes two microforests, water harvesting ponds, food gardens, chickens, habitat plants and an ephemeral creek. 

Moruya Heads, NSW is a small (400sqm) garden near the beach. The soil is pure sand. Here she is experimenting with growing local microforest species in narrow spaces on the block for screening and wildlife, plus, creating a garden that produces a bounty of cut flowers from mainly shrubby Australian and South African species. 

Edwina has developed 10 key actions you can take to make you garden more climate ready. These are:

1. Build healthy soil 

2. Harvest water - treat it as a resource not a problem

3. Plant densely

4. Grow shade to cool your home

5. Attract wildlife with local natives

6. Grow some food

7. Go organic - say no to herbicides, insecticides and pesticides

8. Pave less - only pave where you sit, stand and walk

9. Choose light coloured landscape materials

10. Reject fake plants - no fake lawn and no fake plants. 

She will illustrate each of these 10 actions with examples from her own gardens to show how to prepare your garden (wherever you are located) for the future. 

Questions

Email your questions prior to the presentation to climatefactoryaus@gmail.com. I will endeavour to answer these questions during the workshop.

Edwina also worked with the ACT Government to produce the 'Climate wise garden design booklet'.