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Easy Care Gardening is a gardening service
for the frail, aged and people with a disability pension in
the northern Sydney council districts of Ku-ring-gai,
Hornsby, Ryde and Hunters Hill. Teams of volunteer gardeners
weed, prune, mulch and make gardens safe and tidy so that
these sometimes vulnerable people are able to remain in
their own homes.
 Lyndell
van Noort first made contact with Easy Care Gardening when
she responded to an article in the North Shore Times of 22
February 1989. The article described the launch of Easy Care
Gardening at Ku-ring-gai Wildflower Gardens and said that
the group “…desperately needs volunteer workers,” but didn’t
include a contact phone number. Luckily Lyndell was inspired
enough to pursue the matter, and her original cutting of the
article is covered with the notes she made in her attempt to
make contact. Having finally reached one
of the founders of Easy Care Gardening, Anne Shires, by
phone, Lyndell met Anne for a chat and agreed to work as a
volunteer two days a week. There was no recruitment process
or form filling, just “blind faith” (as Lyndell puts it
now).
Lyndell would work all day until she was dropping with
tiredness. Lyndell kept detailed records of each visit she
made to clients and she reached 3,000 entries some years
ago.
Twenty years on and Lyndell is still working one day a week.
More and more often she is actually older than the people
for whom she is gardening. The weekly gardening has helped
keep her fit and active.
Lyndell is a volunteer team leader and her team members
remain pretty much the same from one year to the next.
Lyndell remembers that Easy Care Gardening’s founder Anne
Shires was able to instill in people the feeling that they
were wanted and needed, and Lyndell has always tried,
obviously successfully, to do the same with her team of
volunteers. Lyndell’s team of people meet and garden for
others and have a lot of fun while they are doing it.
Twenty years’ later and things are still the same for Easy
Care Gardening: a lot has changed but we still
“…desperately need volunteer workers.”
You may be interested.
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