APA’s team of Park Guardians have offered to keep you posted with news and views from their chosen Park within your Adelaide Park Lands
When recruiting Park Guardians, we didn’t suggest that they should be personally responsible for the health of plants or other biodiversity.
However one of our keen Park Guardians, Judith Grimmett has decided that she just can’t let the drought kill off young eucalypts in her chosen Park, the southern half of Victoria Park / Pakapakanthi (around the wetlands)
Two of the saplings Judith has been nurturing.
So, as Judith advises us:
“This is how I am keeping alive the small eucalypts and sheoaks in my section of the Adelaide Park Lands during the current drought.
“My old shopping trolley filled with two-litre plastic bottles of water, to provide about half a litre of water each day or two, to the 60 or so little trees.
“It seems that Adelaide City Council doesn’t have a drought management plan,.
“These trees were planted last year by volunteer community groups, [the South-East City Residents Association’s “Green Pakapakanthi”] but there is no ongoing watering plan to keep them alive.
“The magpie follows me around pecking water droplets off the leaves.”
“The parched mounds east of the wetlands” Jude writes. “The one year old trees planted by “Green Pakapakanthi” in 2024 are being kept alive only by my daily bottle watering. Several had already died before I took up the campaign.”
Would you like to join our team of Park Guardians, in another part of your Adelaide Park Lands? You won’t be expected to hand water the trees!
A Guardian? What’s involved?
The title “Park Guardian” gives you a flavour of the role. Put simply, after you choose a Park within your Park Lands, all that you need to do is:
Take its photos
Watch it change
Share its stories
If you’d like to join the team, first select one of the Parks that doesn’t already have a tick on this map, then contact our Executive Officer David Winderlich executive@adelaide-parklands.asn.au
Too easy?
Yes it’s easy, but the key is to maintain responsibility for “your” one Park on an ongoing, regular basis. Once you’ve chosen and been assigned a particular Park, you (and a friend, if you want to share the role) will be:
contributing at least one photo per month from "your" Park, for publication as the #adelaideparklands #picoftheday on our social media feeds;
writing and illustrating one story each six months about "your" Park to share its features with our readers on our blog and social media;
familiarising yourself with the Trail Guide for "your" Park; and taking responsibility for letting our webmaster know when it could/should be improved and/or updated. Trail Guides rarely need major changes, just occasional tweaking, but for “your” Park it will become, in effect, YOUR Trail Guide; and
providing back-up to a trained APA Tour Guide leader, who will be rostered to conduct and lead occasional Guided Walks, with your support, in "your" Park. There will be only one (or at most, two) per year in “your” Park. You and the rostered, trained Tour Guide leader will be a two-person team taking responsibility for these annual or semi-annual public tours.
