Blue Mountains City Council’s bushfire recovery team has produced a series of ‘how to’ videos to help bushfire-affected households re-establish their property with fire-wise gardens.
Released in December, the videos feature local bushfire-affected residents, experts and support agencies demonstrating various fire-wise approaches to gardening and landscaping to mitigate bushfire risk to homes.
“Fire-wise landscaping is a critical ingredient to rebuilding in bushfire-prone areas,” said Blue Mountains mayor Mark Greenhill.
“Residents often express they don’t know where to start with landscaping or how to identify fire retardant plantings.”
The project originated from fire-affected residents wanting to know how to rebuild their gardens in a way that is fire-wise. In a recent survey of bushfire-affected residents, 80 per cent of participants identified gardening and landscaping as their biggest challenge to rebuilding.
The four videos provide specific and locally relevant information on landscape design and maintenance in bushfire-prone areas, covering topics of managing weeds following a bushfire, how to design your garden to minimise bushfire risk, and personal stories of bushfire-affected residents.
The project was helped along by a $5000 NRMA grant and the assistance of more than 30 volunteers.
Cliff Harvey from Winmalee, a participant in the filming, said “re-establishing a garden has been important in our recovery journey, it’s the difference of feeling like you have moved back home not just into a house”.
The video series feature the contributions from Hawkesbury TAFE on the importance of landscape design, expert advice from local Fire NSW and Rural Fire Service representatives, and council staff on mitigating property risk.
The videos are available on Blue Mountains City Council YouTube channel www.youtube.com/user/BlueMtnsCityCouncil.
