PROGRAM

These small group afternoon sessions will be a short primer on all the household bushfire resilience aspects essential to know when we live in the most bushfire prone area of Australia. Choose and register for the Saturday or Sunday session. Attendees will learn about bushfire behavior and its importance in siting and landscape; outline planning design and construction matters; investigate defendable space through landscape design; discuss what is FireWise planting; before examining the importance of water, access/egress and bushfire maintenance of your property. The workshops will be held at the award-winning ECOdesign Studio and garden, offering the opportunity to learn, reflect and action your safer home and garden environment within the bushfire-prone Blue Mountains.

FACILITATORS

Susan Bell has qualifications in horticulture, landscape design, permaculture, environmental management and strategic planning, with a Masters degree in the latter. She has taught at TAFE and University across a range of related subjects and spent several years working as a consultant, designing numerous gardens across the Blue Mountains towns. From 2007 until 2020 she was employed as Principal Urban Designer at the Blue Mountains City Council. She is a retired Landscape Architect who has made her contribution to bushfire design and recovery.

Nigel Bell is a sustainability architect and consultant who has worked in the Blue Mountains and elsewhere for more than forty years. Winner of personal and professional awards, he has been at the national forefront of bushfire resilient design, construction and recovery for several decades. He represents architects nationally on Australian Standards and the 2020 Royal Commission regarding bushfires, through practice, education and built projects. He’s been active in sharing his knowledge through two decades of ECOhome tours and more recently, involvement in bushfire resilience.