Wakool Garden Club

The Wakool Garden Club was founded by Kim Bain around two years ago, with the help of Intereach staff member, Wendy, to reconnect with the community after suffering a stroke at 27. Kim said, “There wasn’t a lot of stuff like that in the community at the time. The idea was to get people out and about; to come here to swap produce, have a cuppa and have a chat.” 

After an initial slow start, the Garden Club really began to grow, starting with four and growing to 11. Kim spoke about how the local council showed its support by making garden beds in the park beside the Wakool Community Memorial Hall around 18 months ago. “Whatever is grown here can be used by anyone in the community. We all come and water it and grow stuff that people need and use.” 

Linda Carey, a Garden Club member, spoke about the produce that has been swapped. She said “We’ve had veggies, eggs, plants, trees, fruit, and cuttings so far.” However, everyone also joked about gardening not always getting a mention at meetings. Gloria Pratt, who Kim refers to as the “ideas’ lady” of the group, said, “It’s more of a mental thing for people to get together. If you haven’t seen anyone in a while you just come here and chat about things.” 

Some of Gloria’s ideas include giving new members a couple of calendars when they join. One covers the ideal times to plant things in the garden and the other shows all the dates of Garden Club events. Gloria joked, “That way, no one has an excuse not to come!” Gloria also keeps a record of everyone’s birthdays and brings a home-made cake and card from everyone at Garden Club to the meeting to celebrate. Last month doubled as a Christmas get-together and birthday party for local gardener, Sasha Shadforth.  

This year, the Garden Club is hoping to branch out even further. Gloria said, “We might have some guest speakers come out to talk about different plants and vegetables. We could meet with other gardening clubs and we can do day trips out to nurseries.” 

The Wakool Garden Club provides the area with a great social outlet and opportunity to share interests with local people at no cost; aside from an occasional gold coin donation to cover the milk and sugar for a cup of tea. So, feel welcome to drop in on any meeting, held at 10:30am on the third Thursday of each month in the park beside the Wakool Community Memorial Hall.