In full bloom

Published on 08 November 2024

Winners of the Mayor’s 2024 Garden Competition have been announced.

The six winners were named in a ceremony at the Aldinga Community Centre on 4 November.

Among the winners are a striking productive garden, a small native patch fronting a suburban streetscape, a garden of art and memories, and a spring garden with blooms from white and pink and scarlet.

Winners were announced in six categories: school, community, native, memorial, rural and urban residential.

The 20 garden entries were judged by a six-person panel, including Mayor Moira Were and Councillors Michael Fisher and Lauren Jew.

Entries were judged on first impressions, design, maintenance and sustainability.

Mayor’s 2024 Garden Competition winners

Best School Garden: Huntfield Heights Primary School

The school garden is a well-love and well-maintained fruit and vegetable garden. It is used to teach children about gardening, cooking, art and animal care. It is a combination of raised beds and terraced plots.

Sunrise Christian Primary School was a finalist in the category.

Best Community Garden: Woodcroft/Morphett Vale Neighbourhood Centre

Commended for its combination of amenity, native species and food plantings, the garden also has a seed library for use for the community and a greenhouse. The garden uses of rainwater and supports bee habitat.

Hackham West Community Centre was a finalist in the category.

Best Native Garden: Raylene and Jason Cook

The garden effectively uses the small space in the family’s front yard, adjacent to the road verge. It boasts a combination of local native species that provide an ecosystem for local fauna. Raylene and Jason propagate seeds from the garden for local planning events.

Hackham West Community Centre was a finalist in the category.

Best Memorial Garden: Sharyn Lockett

The thoughtful garden is created to remember passed love ones. It has unique pieces of artwork, including half a windmill, and specially chosen plants that tell the story of each individual. The garden blends seamlessly into the surrounding rural environment.

Best Rural Garden: Nick and Leah Maxwell

This is a beautiful cottage garden in keeping with its rural environment and the historic cottage on site. It features a bright front garden with a range of colours and textures, complemented by vegetable garden beds set among gravel paths.

Best Urban Residential Garden: Christine Pearson

Coloured from head to toe, this garden is filled with roses, bulbs and groundcovers, as well as plants inherited from passed loved ones. The garden consists of multiple separate spaces, creating both space and delightful surprises. As a now two-time winner of this competition, Christine’s garden now enters the competition’s hall of fame.

Three other finalists were named in this category: Dee and Iain Nash, Karen Whittaker and Andrew Thiele.

Highly commended

A garden by Sarah McKillup was highly commended by the judges.

PHOTOS FROM TOP

Best school garden
Best community garden
Best native garden
Best memorial garden
Best rural garden
Best urban residential garden
Highly commended garden