Gardening help
Easy Care Gardening is a voluntary home and community care organisation for the frail elderly, and people with a disability in Hornsby, Hunters Hill, Ku-ring-gai and Ryde council districts in Sydney.
Easy Care helps people maintain their gardens to ensure that their clients can live in their own homes longer. Last year Easy Care Gardening volunteers spent over 16,500 hours for around 650 clients.
Volunteers are often retired men and women who want to give something back to the community while keeping fit and busy. For more information about Easy Care Gardening phone (02) 9983 1644 or go to www.easycaregardening.org.au
Easy Care beginnings
Many wonderful things come out of a kitchen but the recipe for a volunteer gardening group is not one that comes to mind.
Such were the beginnings of Easy Care Gardening in 1988 when two friends Anne Shires and Kathleen Ciemiega sat at the kitchen table in Anne's Killara home to lay the seeds for what now has become an organisation with five full-time staff and over 260 volunteers servicing 650 clients in the Hornsby, Hunters Hill, Kur-ring-gai and Ryde districts.
Soon after Anne and Kathleen hatched Easy Care Gardening 19 years ago, Henry Llewellyn offered to look after accounting until two more 'original founders' Lyndell van Noort and Joan Jamieson joined.
Anne Shires now lives on the Central Coast and laughs when she speaks of those early days. "Our first year was trial and error. We put an ad in the local paper and straight away 20 calls came in. There were only three of us and it was difficult in those days to take calls as well as go out to assess gardens and do the gardening as well.
"Ku-ring-gai Council was marvellous and behind us all the way. We were awarded a small grant by the council and they specifically requested that we buy an answer machine so people could contact us," laughed Anne.
Anne said overgrown gardens can cause a resident to get very depressed. "The need was so great. We desperately wanted more volunteers and started advertising. Many wonderful people volunteered to help. Ku-ring-gai Council provided free mulch, and the scouts and guides came to help as well. People were really terrific," she said.
"Soon we grew bigger, and we received government funding to employ a full time manager, Bruce Taylor, who has become the driving force for Easy Care Gardening and he has done a terrific job.
"If you have the time, becoming a volunteer for Easy Care Gardening is very satisfying as it gives so much happiness to the householder. People work outside in groups and there's so much fellowship gained from working together," said Anne.
For information about Easy Care Gardening, phone 9983 1644. |
