The Hawkesbury Harvest Farm Gate Trail

Mount Tomah Botanic Garden

Number 3 Map 1A Hawkesbury Harvest Farm Gate Trail Maps

As someone who has lived in the mountains for several years now, Mt Tomah Botanical Gardens has been one of my favourite places to visit.

 

I have regularly taken my children there for the various Treasure Hunts or Quests. Often though I have gone on my own, to enjoy the beauty of this place in a different way.

Today I went with the kids.  It is school holidays and they are very familiar now with the way the Treasure Hunts work.  As they race ahead of me, following clues and a string of terrible jokes/arrows (even the writer admits they are bad at one point!) I am able to follow at a more leisurely pace and reacquaint myself with favourite spots in the Gardens.

 

We are blessed with an outrageously perfect autumnal day. A blue sky arches overhead.  The leaves are on the turn but  I can see that the colours of autumn here, the wonderful russets and reds and golds will deepen further yet in coming weeks. The proteas are stunning and I love watching the kids stop and gently stroke foliage, enjoying the textures.

 

We loop through the Meadow and the woods, this time not walking past the secret bower bird's nest that a kind ranger showed us once.  The pencil breaks and we choose our own trail, making sure to visit the ponds filled with koi.

my favourite tree...

  ... and its shadow

A picnic is consumed and it is time to go.  

We are not sad to leave.

That's because we know we will be back.

Mount Tomah Botanic Garden

Bells Line of Road via Bilpin NSW  02 4567 2154

www.mounttomahbotanicgarden.com.au

Please visit the  Hawkesbury Harvest website

The Secret Garden and Nursery

Number 17 Map 1B Hawkesbury Harvest Farm Gate Trail Maps

In a quiet corner of the University of Western Sydney's Hawkesbury Campus there is a magical Secret Garden. Spread over 2 hectares is a horticultural nursery which has both plants and the welfare of people with disabilities and mental illness at its heart.

Run by Hawkesbury Skills Inc  (a not for profit organisation) the garden and nursery deliver training, support and respite to people from various relevant groups.  On the day I visited I met men from Cherrywood Village and watched a group of school children from a local special education unit wandering happily around the garden and picking vegetables from their plot. I heard their cries of pleasure as they visited the pigs and saw little black lambs.

 

 

 

I also met Marianne who is responsible for the day to day running of the nursery and who is assisted by a third year horticultural apprentice, Alicia.

Patiently they work with volunteers and the disabled who together ensure that the hundreds of plants in their care are in the best shape possible for sale to the public.

Marianne tells me that the garden receives no government funding, but relies instead on a handful of philanthropic donors and also volunteer work to keep going.  Plant sales are crucial to the ongoing viability of the project.

People with medium to high needs are taught nursery skills and just as importantly, life skills, as they develop socially and build friendships.

Marianne sums up the work being done as "horticultural health therapy."

On average 50 or so people with disabilities a week visit the site and include organisations, schools and individuals.

New Start participants, approximately 8 - 10 a week, work here as well.

"We could always do with more " says Marianne, wryly, referring to volunteer workers.

 

Travis - a regular volunteer

 

 

It was a privilege to spend time with Darryl, George, Mark and Kenny.

 

 

Darryl mows the lawn...

 

 

Mark does the watering

 

 

George rakes and generally helps out

 

 

and Kenny, who is extremely unsteady on his feet, can pot the tiniest seedling with the utmost care.

This beautiful nursery, which sells hundreds of different varieties of plants, can be found by entering College Drive from Bourke Street (Richmond).  Turn right down the dirt road opposite the security hut and follow the Secret Garden signs.

It is open Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm and holds a special plant sale on the first Saturday of the month.

 

 

Cnr Science Road and Campus Drive

University of Western Sydney

Richmond

02 4567 8424

Please visit the Hawkesbury Harvest website...