Volunteer gardening crew blitz gardens back to life | My Garden Path | Gardening Australia

[Music] today i have the pleasure of visiting gloria mcgrath who lives in penn hills in sydney's north west 93 years young gloria has tended her large leafy garden in the burbs for decades how important is having a garden nothing nothing is more important than that and once upon a time i was able to work at a pretty good state and i can do things just because i lost the ability to do the big things there was still little things that could be done and i unashamedly spend a lot of time out here in my deck and loved doing it oh hello and i'm not the only person to pop in today glory is being visited by the easy care gardening volunteer crew a not-for-profit organisation that helps older people maintain and take care of their gardens the volunteer crew are going to get gloria's garden into shape what sort of work do they do for you everything that seems to be out of place or just getting too big for me and there's always miles of leaves down there i know i need what they're doing very much in my old age i'm trying to do it all by myself and i know i can't so i'm very dependent upon them larissa hansen is one of the coordinators with easy care gardening and a horticulturist we rely on our volunteers to get this work done and i think that really does show probably in in our efforts it's a very special garden this one and we love coming here there's something nice about raking it's satisfying you can see what you're doing yeah yeah i agree here in this garden uh there's a lot of ground covers we had a really wet summer season so everything has got quite overgrown and since our last visit uh there's some pathways to be found so i think for gloria that's that's definitely number one and uh that she can still be here and appreciate uh her beautiful home this is one of my favorite spots because of all the sandstone that's under that yeah it's beautiful it's beautiful so you'll see it's going to come up really nicely my lovely path down here you're lovely i'm a nurse so i think that actually keeping people in their homes is hugely important and i think it must be very difficult for people if they look at their garden and they can't actually get out there and do their own thing actually that's that's must be really hard for people i think the the mostly what i enjoy is company of my colleagues how are you doing cars i'm done so i was 40 years sitting behind the computer so a bit of physical work in the garden is great i'm not doing only that group are you doing three others really yes what's your take on gloria oh she's lovely you'll hear all these interesting stories from the owners of the houses you know they've had a great great life most of them yes and it's really inspiring hugh hamlin harris has been involved with the organization for many years easy care gardening started 32 years ago with a group of people that thought it was a worthy cause from 32 years to now we've grown enormously and we're active over four districts in sydney we care for over a thousand people remaining at home we have at the moment around about 350 volunteers [Music] out the back it's a shady oasis thanks to a towering canary island date palm but it needs a haircut the spiky fronds have become a bit of a hazard and wayne is on the job we have to pull the loose fronds down so they don't hit the clients in the head because this is the dangerous part for the people the heavy bit and all the spikes and because we have to bundle it up to put it out for the council to clean up where the spikes are we've actually got to just nip those off it's a great tip because they're like hypodermic needles and if they go in they really cause bad infection they are bad do you like volunteering oh yeah it's good there's lots of interesting people you meet there are other volunteers and you actually get to see lots of things i've never come across one of these before i did volunteering and now i know this i'd never plant one how's gloria hello she's good good afternoon tea here [Music] classic stories of um where something's gone wrong or you've chopped something out put it back yes gloria yes do you enjoy this part of the of the visit my friend get near by just made me a beautiful cup of coffee so i'm enjoying it and i love having so many people on my deck i feel that i'm part of the whole community still because when you know you're letting things go or you're not able to cope is a very disappointing feeling that you've got [Music] and i love my garden i don't mind telling everybody that and once we were given the choice of living in our own homes instead of going into care the garden became more important it's all about independence isn't it oh yes [Music] the team only visit these gardens a couple of times a year so anything to reduce maintenance is valuable in this case we're putting down newspaper under the mulch and that'll control the weeds anywhere from five to ten sheets down and that will smother any weeds and weed seeds that are there and then we're putting mulch on the top of that hey gloria it's coming along well yeah look at the mulch yeah and i listened to the lesson you were giving people when you told them what to do i did you yeah not going to miss out on anything it's gone a long way in a few hours oh absolutely and a whole lot of people are going to hear about that they're quite a crew aren't they they certainly are it is totally fantastic [Music] you

Channel: Gardening Australia

Views: 10,399

Keywords: Gardening, Gardening Australia, garden, gardening tips, gardening advice, plants, how to, ABC, ABC TV, Easy Care Gardening, not-for-profit organisation, volunteer

Id: DZI8eXSbn2s

Length: 7min 5sec (425 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 18 2021