While thousands made their way through the gates of the annual Living Smart Festival at Speers Point Park at the weekend, 10-year-old Lili Vanderwey was kept busy urging visitors of all ages to drop a bean on what she hoped was an award-winning display.
The Cardiff Public School student and her teammates were hosting a plot of raised dirt that boasted an important message within the event’s ‘Grow Zone’.
Together they’d created a feature what was hopefully an inviting, innovative and interactive Living Smart Garden.
A Dinosaur Garden, Fairy Garden, musical flowers and Tic-Tac-Toe all featured within the raised garden bed.
A self-watering planter, hanging garden, miniature greenhouse and solar-powered bird bath all promoted the sustainable living theme.
“Our garden is environmentally friendly, it conserves energy, it’s sustainable and it reuses and reduces waste,” the self-declared ‘Head of Press and Publication’ told the Newcastle Weekly.
“We’ve also got a bug hotel and we didn’t use any chemicals or pesticides on our garden because they can be dangerous for wildlife, too.”
The school’s mini-garden was one of a dozen colourful, hand-made and grown school displays to feature at the two-day event.
Each team vied for top honours, with visitors asked to drop a borlotti bean in the jar labelled with the school they thought had successfully produced the smartest living garden for 2023.
Clever gardens were just one of the many displays designed to offer visitors a prompt to live more in tune with mother nature.
The day also included sustainability-themed panel talks, presentations, workshops and demonstrations, from permaculture to First Nations art and craft.
A free giveaway saw thousands of native seedlings handed out to Lake Mac residents.
While a plastics station offered a visualisation of the horrors dumped on the planet each and every day, dresses made from surgical masks represented a new way of thinking.
Honey, soaps, recycled clothing, stainless steel tableware, electric bikes, and reusable drink containers were several ingredients on display suggesting “smarter living’.
Then as the sun slowly sunk over the lake, a corner of the park was transformed into an adult’s playground as MAP mima became the set for the Feast for the Senses dinner event.
While Oz Harvest dished up a delicious two-course meal, music by Hot Potato Band and a drumming workshop by Urban Drummers kept visitors entertained until dark.
Sunday saw Speers Point Park then transformed for the Living Together Festival, a celebration of multiculturalism in the community.
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