Homegrown Parkes and Central West Lachlan Landcare were acknowledged as winners of the Community Spirit and Inclusion Award at the Keep Australia Beautiful NSW Awards night on Saturday in Bathurst.

It was my pleasure to be able to accept the Award which acknowledges the passion, hard work and dedication of our Homegrown Parkes Committee.

Our Homegrown Parkes submission contributed to the overall win for Parkes, who are now the State Winners and will attend the National Conference in May 2025!

This Award is possible due to the decision of our Landcare Committee to support the delivery of Homegrown Parkes events until June 2027, in line with our current funding for the Local Landcare Coordinator role through the Landcare Enabling Program.

This decision from our Committee has led to partnerships, engagement, contributions back into our community, encouragement of new small business, increased social cohesion and educational opportunities.

This would not be possible without the dedicated volunteers from Central West Lachlan Landcare and Parkes Community Arts.

If you have thought about joining a volunteer group like these, now is the time!

We have already began planning for our two events in 2025 and hope to share some exciting news in the next couple of weeks regarding these two events.

Of course, Homegrown Parkes is not possible without support from Parkes Shire Council.

It takes a team behind the scenes to prepare and recover from events in the Park itself and we work closely with Council Events staff to ensure that we are making the most of opportunities for each event.

Parkes will now host the 2025 Keep Australia Beautiful Awards, which is a wonderful opportunity to showcase our local projects and our communities.

Next week I will be sharing some of the feedback from our last event.

Thank you to everyone that contributed to our surveys.

This helps to share our future events and to make improvements to provide the best free community learning and engagement event that we can.

Moving forward and looking towards our March event….here are some things that you can be doing: start planning for veggies and fruit, plants and preserves that you can share at Crop Swap; follow Homegrown Parkes on Facebook and Instagram, and talk to others about getting involved or maybe have a ‘produce challenge’ with your friends.

For further information on this article, please go to www.centralwestlachlanlandcare.org, twitter, facebook or Instagram @cwllandcare or contact Marg Applebee on 0418 611 053.