Couple’s planting pursuit brightens up their community

Keen gardeners Garry and Lynne Ravenwood are beautifying curbside gardens around Pirimai. Photo / Warren Buckland

For the past 11 years, Garry and Lynne Ravenwood have been taking care of the planting and upkeep of the Pirimai Shopping Centre gardens.

To add to their work on the gardens around Pirimai Plaza, five years ago Garry and Lynne dug up most of their back lawn area and filled the space with a large vegetable garden.

As their backyard vege garden flourished, it meant the couple could deliver more than 3000 vegetables to the Salvation Army Foodbank, over a four-year period.

Now, after moving into the Bupa retirement village, the couple said they’d noticed public council-owned areas around Pirimai were unkempt, as was the area outside the Bupa boundary fence.

The pair have taken to regularly mowing the grass area and have extensively planted osteospermums between Pirimai and Bupa. Most recently Gary and Lynne have planted flowers along the 1.2km-long north and west Bupa boundaries.

Garry Ravenwood needed something to keep himself busy so decided to add some colour to the council-owned garden beds around Pirimai. Photo / Warren Buckland

Gary explained, “It was all weeds before we started so we had to spray the lot and turn the soil, so planting the plants was the easier part really, getting it ready was the hard part.”

Lynne said, “The flowers have made a huge difference and it makes the place look so nice.”

The couple started the upkeep because Garry needed something to do, loves gardening and living right next to the boundary fence the pair would rather be looking out at something “pretty”.

All the plants alongside the Bupa retirement village have been nurtured from those the couple planted at the Pirimai shopping centre.

Lynne explained, “They just grow and grow and look really nice and are maintenance-friendly.”

Garry said, “In this situation, the perennial flowers are ideal as they don’t need to be replanted every year, they just need to be cut back a bit and if one dies, there are seedlings that will just come up and take its place.”

Garry has no plans to slow down and has big plans for more spaces, because they have asked the council if they can do some more planting.