Shire of Denmark, Western Australia, is helping residents make their own gardens more fire resilient with a fire-wise gardening demonstration in the local community precinct.
Chris Ferreira and his expert team from the Forever Project narrated the installation of a sustainable, fire-wise garden from the ground up, providing insight into the reasons and science behind the design.
The garden was constructed within the Shire’s Plane Tree Precinct, where development is currently underway creating a meeting place, designed to revitalise and rejuvenate the town centre.
The Plane Tree Precinct is home to the first fire-wise garden of this scale in a public realm.
The hands-on workshop was the last in a series funded by the federal government’s Natural Disaster Resilience Program (NDRP) which supports communities to raise awareness and resilience around bushfire risk.
Shire Bushfire Risk Planning Coordinator, Melanie Haymont said understanding and implementing the principles of fire-wise garden and property design can have a flow-on effect that would benefit Denmark as a whole.
“By people managing bushfire risk on their individual properties they can have a huge impact on their whole neighbourhood’s bushfire risk.
“If everyone managed the vegetation on their properties we would be in a great position to manage risk across the entire shire.
“If people know to evacuate early and bushfire volunteers can be assured properties can be defendable, this would save a lot of time and resources during a fire event.”
