By Carol Parkinson and Kath Ives
This year marks 15 years since Whistle Stop Heritage and Community Garden commenced its work.
A celebration will be held this October to commemorate the milestone and to congratulate all those volunteers who worked so hard to get it to where it is today.
Miraculously, over these 15 years, volunteers have put in almost 50,000 hours of hard yakka. Without the volunteers’ contributions, our beautiful garden would not exist. Further, it’s through their hard work that current volunteers can continue to help the garden grow beyond imagination.
The frost has been a regular visitor in all our gardens this month with some very surprising subzero temperatures. That’s where Whistle Stop Garden comes into its own.
The garden specialises in plants that thrive in this district. It is a great place to discover what grows and what doesn’t grow in our region. It is highly recommended that all those new (and not-so-new) to town to check-in at Whistle Stop before deciding what to plant in their own garden.
Whistle Stop is open 8am to noon Wednesday-Saturday and the plants sales igloo has plants available for sale that have been lovingly propagated in-house from plants growing in the garden.
The most recent addition to the Whistle Stop Garden is the second-hand book shop in the Goods Shed. A call out for book donations to the community in May was very successful and resulted in excellent quality titles overflowing from our bookshelves. Donations of more books (and bookshelves) are still very much welcomed.
The Goods Shed also hosts a number of local crafts products created by volunteers. The beautiful Birds on Logs collective is especially popular, as are the crocheted scrunchies and glasses cases, bookmarks, greeting cards and more.
It is a hive of activity and with a recent upgrade to the solar power system, the space is now available for arts workshops and as a community meeting space. Whistle Stop Garden has diversified to make a beautiful space more resilient and self-sufficient for a long time to come.
Here’s to the next 15 years.
