Green Spaces Counter The Blues

The Green Spaces Counter the Blues project delivered a multi-faceted community-led approach to building drought resilience across the Shire of Manjimup. Through over 130 events, the project engaged residents in innovative, hands-on workshops blending sustainability, gardening, community wellbeing and leadership development. Activities spanned garden design, bushfire preparedness, mental health, biodiversity and sustainable living, with a strong emphasis on greenspaces as vital to both climate adaptation and mental wellbeing.

The project successfully:

• Fostered innovation by blending local and professional expertise in food, sustainability and wellbeing education.

• Raised awareness about drought impacts, encouraging behavioural change.

• Enabled community-wide learning and sharing of water-wise gardening and landscaping practices, including xeriscaping.

• Expanded Southern Forests Community Landcare (SFCL)’s community reach by partnering with schools, local businesses, artists, DFES and other grassroots organisations.

• Increased use and visibility of community infrastructure including local gardens, the Manjimup Heritage Park, Northcliffe Forest Park and SFCL’s office, while promoting sustainable upgrades and resilience planning.

• This integrated, community-empowered initiative enhanced local knowledge, built social cohesion and laid a strong foundation for long-term climate resilience in the Southern Forests region.

The workshops contributed to key project objectives:

1.      Increased community awareness of the role of green spaces in supporting mental and physical wellbeing.

2.      Promoted understanding of the effects of a drying climate on local parks, gardens, and reserves, and how to design resilient gardens.

3.      Raised awareness of regional water sources and the impact of drought on waterways.

4.      Increased knowledge of local flora and fauna and encouraged garden adaptations to support biodiversity.

5.      Supported climate impact monitoring in Northcliffe Forest Park and Manjimup Heritage Park through community engagement, including education on apps such as FrogID and iNaturalist.

6.      Strengthened partnerships with a range of community organisations to align activities and expand project reach.

We are most proud of the way our project successfully engaged women as the primary audience—both through social media and in-person events—by sharing practical knowledge on how to make their homes and gardens more climate-resilient. We are equally proud of the strong engagement with young people in the agricultural and horticultural industries, who recognised the potential to scale the practical insights from our small landholder workshops to improve resilience on their own farms in response to a drying climate.

This project was supported by FRRR (The Foundation for Rural & Regional Renew) through funding from the Australian Government’s Future Drought Fund.