Large increase in volunteers for Care for Hedland as Great Gardens Competition highlights community commitment

The ‘Oscars’ of Hedland gardening has showcased the great work of the community with Care for Hedland registering a big increase in volunteers this year. The Great Gardens Competition is an annual event run by Care for Hedland in which members of the community enter their gardens into various award categories. The awards night for the competition was held on Thursday, August 17, with Rebecca Fogerty winning the grand champ garden award which came with a $15,000 prize. Other award categories included the best lawn, best ornamental garden, best edible garden, best school and daycare garden, best junior garden, and a start your patch from scratch division. Care for Hedland Community Garden co-ordinator Robyn Todd said the competition was made possible by the great work of volunteers. She said over the previous year Care For Hedland had registered a big increase in volunteer hours. “We celebrate our volunteers and use the night to acknowledge all the great work that they do,” she said. “We were up over three hundred volunteer hours last year compared to the previous years. “Last year we did around 550 volunteer hours and this year we did over 860 hours.” Care for Hedland receives both community and corporate volunteers to help run its programs, events, and facilities. One of Care for Hedland’s major programs is the Community Garden in South Hedland, which offers fresh produce to the community. The garden is mostly run by volunteers. Ms Todd said she was unable to record all the volunteer hours this year and the actual number was likely much higher. She said she believed volunteering had increased in Port Hedland given its benefits. “Volunteering does so much for you and a lot of people are doing it tough,” she said. “If you can do something to help yourself mentally then it does make things a bit better.” Care for Hedland’s famous turtle monitoring program, which also relies on volunteers, begins in October.