Monthly workshops
LDCG runs a Monthly workshop program for members and the public. The workshops are around the themes of permaculture, organic gardening and sustainability and have included; banana circles, wicking beds, making art with natural materials, improving your soil and composting, Hugelkultur, weed management, making mango chutney and achar, sharing garden stories and basic bike maintenance. These workshops were made possible by an Environment and Climate Change Grant from the City of Darwin (2017) and have engaged over a 150 people.
Work for the Dole program
Since 2014 we have been working with Max employment and the Work for the Dole scheme. The garden maintenance project, supervised by Dirk Peek and Lia Gill runs on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Some great outcomes have included the ongoing development of the garden, and some of the WFD clients developing a love of gardening and going on to get jobs in landscaping and horticulture.
Land for Wildlife
In 2017 the garden signed up as a Land For Wildlife educational site through Greening Australia. This means that we support and promote the preservation and re-vegetation of native habitat. The program has a particular focus on supporting Black-footed Tree-rats which have been spotted on the CDU campus and is a threatened species. Greening Australia has supplied us with native plants, many of them edible to create a wildlife corridor on the edge of our site. These trees were planted and watered by the Green Army. Conservation Volunteers have also been energetically clearing coffee bush and mission grass alongside the Rapid Creek mangroves. This area has now been replanted with 50 natives.
Compost collection – reducing waste
In 2017 Seabreeze Festival approached LDCG as a potential site to process the compost collected from the Nightcliff foreshore in May. Georgia Glen and Dirk Peek enthusiastically took on the task of setting up an information space and supervising the compost tumblers. We learned a lot about the potential to develop effective composting in the NT. This activity is now a regular feature of our community engagement and is supported by an Environment and Climate Change grant from City of Darwin. We look forward to working with Waste Free Darwin, Darwin markets and ECNT to further build our activities in 2018 and contribute to a reduction in market and festival waste.
Green shed
In 2018 we built a new undercover shed space, with the support of a NT Government’s Community development building grant. The Green Shed provides shelter for our workshop, working bee and WFD crew in the wetter months as well as giving us a space to store educational materials.