Lynne Mowbray|

Television presenterCosta ‘the garden gnome’ Georgiadis from ABC’s Gardening Australia, was atYamba Community Garden on Saturday morning, for the ‘Get Grubby Garden Party’.

Children and adults alike dressed up as garden gnomes to hang out with the garden guru, to learn more about how to make their backyard gardens rock.

The party began with a smoking ceremony which was conducted by Yaegl Elder, Uncle Ron Heron, who was assisted by Yaegl man Michael Laurie who explained the meaning of the smoking ceremony, to the crowd.

Dirtgirl producer and ‘garden gnome interpreter’, Cate McQuillen explained what took place during Saturday’s garden party.

“During Costa’s garden party, he talked about chickens and chicken dancing, there was a garden gnome statue competition and Costa talked about the amazing role that bees play in our world,” Cate said.

“He also talked about how great it is to grow vegies and what awesome things community gardens are for bringing people together. So if you don’t have a backyard or if you don’t have a space to grow your own food, most communities now have a community garden where you can go and hang out, make some new friends and grow some great food,” she said.

Cate said that a lot of Australia is in drought at the moment and water is really scarce, so saving and caring for water is a great thing we can do.

“Reusing the water that we use for washing up and showering and taking that outside to water our gardens, is also great,” Kate said.

“In our garden we can mulch around our plants. So instead of the sun beating down on the soil and all that water evaporating, we put like a blanket of mulch around our plants, which keeps the water nice and tight in the soil.

“So mulching is really important,” she said.

On Saturday night, the Yamba Chamber of Commerce invited the community to attend a dinner with Costa at the Pacific Hotel and enjoy an evening of inspired conversations and to talk about the sustainability vision for Yamba.