Did you join us on Saturday at Homegrown Parkes?

Wow! It was a gorgeous day! Thank you to everyone who made our visitors feel welcome in the Parkes Shire. The Keep Australia Beautiful Tidy Towns Sustainability Awards attendees had a fantastic time in Parkes!

Our Homegrown Parkes Community Survey is now open. We would love to hear from you if you attended the Homegrown Parkes event on Saturday, 11 October 2025. The link can be found here or on our social media.

We have some lovely Homegrown Parkes gifts for several lucky people drawn from survey respondents. Coffee from The Folk Roaster, keep-it cups, lucerne hay, a beautiful work from Glenn Sloane and a gift pack from Tumbling Downs Olives.

Our stallholder survey has also been distributed. Both of the surveys close on Friday, 31 October 2025 at 5pm.

Homegrown Parkes events aren’t about being bigger for every event. The ethos behind the ‘homegrown’ concept is more about quality. Whilst having 80 stalls in our park would provide a lot of diversity, it is really important that we maintain a standard that focusses on promoting local and regional businesses, not for profits etc.

We try to factor in your suggestions moving forward, particularly around demonstrations, workshops, educational opportunities and stallholder suggestions.

These events would not be possible without many volunteers contributing on the day. Thank you to our Central West Lachlan Landcare volunteers and Parkes Community Arts volunteers, Forbes Riverside Garden volunteers. Thanks to the Parkes Shire Concert Band, Parkes Music and Dramatic Society and Spicy Mercury for providing our fabulous musical entertainment. We love being able to showcase our local talent…and how good were our Fijian friends to finish off our day?

A thank you must go to Phil and Nadia Donato for hosting the tiramisu workshop….and for filling our tummies with beautiful tiramisu and providing us with some fabulous giveaways for workshop attendees.

Central West Lachlan Landcare have committed to delivering Homegrown Parkes events for our community. We are supported by volunteers from our Committee, volunteers from the Parkes Community Arts Committee and with in-kind support from Parkes Shire Council and grant funding from Evolution Northparkes Operations.

If you would like to keep up to date with Homegrown Parkes and other Landcare activities, follow our social media or join our newsletter mailing list.

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