Engaging the Community in Water Management:The Great Gardens Workshop Series

Synopsis

The Town of Kwinana, a Water Campaign™ participant since 2003, recognises the role of community education to promote the value of water conservation. This case study explores how they partnered with relevant stakeholders to engage local residents in a number of critical environmental issues including water conservation and water quality.

The Town of Kwinana participated in delivering a Great Gardens workshop series, a free educational show designed to teach local gardeners about specific gardening and environmental issues including water conservation and responsible fertiliser use.

The Great Gardens workshops bought together local government, state agencies, businesses, community groups and individual landowners. The program was developed by Landcare Solutions and is delivered in partnership with the Swan-Canning Cleanup Program, The Swan River Trust, The Water Corporation and the Nursery and Garden Industry Association of WA (Great Gardens website 2005) .

Motivation behind holding the Great Gardens Workshops

The workshops act on a number of critical environmental issues including water conservation and water quality.

The Town of Kwinana lies within the catchment of WA’s most intensively used Marine Embayment: Cockburn Sound and the Peel-Harvey estuarine system. Water quality in these catchments is an important issue, with nutrients increasing growth of nuisance algae and the loss of marine habitat in these systems (Australian Government, 2001). The workshops ultimately aim to link the actions of locals to encourage them to reduce nutrient run-off to these water bodies from domestic gardens.

The scarcity of water in Western Australia is prompting local governments to promote water conservation to the community and increase understanding that the cumulative effect of each household’s reductions will reduce the pressure on this vital resource. Promoting water conservation through these workshops to people with gardens acts on the portion of the residential population that uses the most water.

Approach Undertaken and Lessons Learnt

Celebrity Gardeners were a particularly popular drawcard to Great Gardens and their ability to answer obscure questions assisted in attracting a wide range of gardeners to the event.

Feedback forms were very important in trying to gauge the success of Great Gardens and estimate consequent reductions in water use and fertiliser loss through intended immediate behaviour change. Using the forms as entry into the prize draw helped their return, although some were incomplete.

Participants were able to move around the displays throughout the workshop. Feedback indicated that this was an effective tool to retain the participants interest.

The workshops utilised research conducted by the Southern Metropolitan Regional Council in a project called Green Houses (a community program that targets householder energy use) which found that encouraging workshop participants to commit to goals had a beneficial impact on behaviour change (Southern Metropolitan Regional Council, 2005).

The workshop sessions and demonstrations were specifically aimed at gardeners. This assisted in drawing an wide ranging audience and not just the portion of the community who are generally motivated to attend environmental events.

Savings and Benefits

Water Savings – It is often difficult to assess the effectiveness of community behaviour change initiatives as attendance does not always equate to changes in practise. Participants in the latest Kwinana Great Gardens Workshop indicated through a survey that the workshop had influenced them to make behaviour changes that would reduce their water consumption by an average of 806L of water a week, each.

Note: This figure was based on their commitments in reducing watering times and reducing the number of waterings per week. Average water consumption was assumed as 10L/min. In future workshops participants meter readings may be taken to further quantify water savings as a result of the workshops.

Participants’ made commitments to reduce high water consumption areas such as lawn or changing from using sprinklers to subsurface irrigation and greywater systems. Other goals included reductions in fertiliser consumption, planting of native species and drought tolerant plants.

ICLEI-A/NZ would like to acknowledge the assistance of Ms Rosalind Murray, Mr Ryan Munro and the Town of Kwinana in the production of this case study.

References

1. Landcare Solutions (2005) Great Gardens website http://www.greatgardens.info/ (accessed 27th July 2005)
2. Australian Government (2001) Australia State of the Environment Report 2001 Department of the Environment and Heritage Canberra ACT
3. Southern Metropolitan Regional Council (2005) GREENHOUSES website- http://www.greenhouses.org.au/ (accessed 27th July 2005)

For further information about this project contact:

The Environment Officer
Town of Kwinana
PO BOX 21
KWINANA WA 6167
Phone: (08) 9439 0218