Helen Cushing 22/10/24 Helen Cushing 22/10/24

My favourite book in 2024

Please read this book! Especially the chapter called Rope Swing.

p.s. I’ve reviewed it for a couple of magazines and if you click through you can read them.

Helen Cushing 17/9/24 Helen Cushing 17/9/24

Corridors of Life

I can't get enough of Emma and her fantastic Melbourne Pollinator Corridor. Her mission to create 8km of street gardens for pollinators is a fabulously ambitious and important example of how to be a local activist for nature.

Helen Cushing 17/9/24 Helen Cushing 17/9/24

What’s the Buzz?

Stop killing insects! They are the most important pollinators, essential for life as we know it and for food production. Writing this article was a great opportunity to refresh my love of botany and the relationships between plants and critters.

It's all about plant sex, so read on.

Helen Cushing 7/9/24 Helen Cushing 7/9/24

Kowai Bush and the Mears Track

Visiting patches of remnant lowland beech forest near Christchurch was also a trip into my family's past, present and future.

I've written the story on Kuno, an app/website which is all about the wonders of nature in the best place in the universe - planet Earth.

Helen Cushing 13/6/24 Helen Cushing 13/6/24

The Pollinator Project that’s Transforming Melbourne’s Streets

Recently I met Emma Cutting, founder of the Heart Gardening Project and the Melbourne Pollinator Corridor. She’s a force of nature on a mission to feed the tiny winged things that keep nature reproducing in Australia’s famously urban city.

Helen Cushing 20/3/24 Helen Cushing 20/3/24

The Landscape Architects Making Singapore Wilder

I met innovative landscape architects, Salad Dressing, in Singapore in 2023. I soon realised that a deep, exploratory philosophy underpins their extraordinary work.

Helen Cushing 19/3/24 Helen Cushing 19/3/24

Valley of the Giants: Exploring Tasmania’s Styx River

Published in the Australian Geographic in October, 2001.

The tallest flowering plants in the world (Eucalyptus regnans) grow in Tasmania’s Styx Valley. In 2001 they were being mercilessly logged. A famly liloing trip down the Styx River added the taste of adventure needed to place a story in the Australian Geographi to draw attention to the plight of our mighty old growth forests. Parts of the Styx forest were eventually incorporated into the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, but sadly, logging (and protest) is happening as I write this post in 2024.

Helen Cushing 13/3/24 Helen Cushing 13/3/24

Welcoming the Wild Things

Published in the Organic Gardener, Feb-March, 2024.

It’s a hot day in Singapore but it’s pleasantly cool as I walk through a rainforest in the grounds of the National University of Singapore (NUS). I’m with a champion of urban rewilding, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture Yun Hye Hwang, whose passion for ecological design and planning has transformed the grounds of the NUS campus.

Helen Cushing 2/3/24 Helen Cushing 2/3/24

Safe Refuge at Inala

Published in the Organic Gardener, Feb-March, 2024.

A driven conservationist has turned her property on Bruny Island (TAS) into a haven for endangered birds, plants and trees. Including a jurassic garden.

Dr Tonia Cochran is a self-confessed all or nothing person. So it’s not surprising to learn she owns a 600-hectare nature

reserve, an international wildlife tour company and a two-hectare (five-acre) Gondwanan Botanic Garden, all on Tasmania’s Bruny Island. Not that she ever planned any of the above.

Helen Cushing 28/2/24 Helen Cushing 28/2/24

Seeds of Change: the seed savers networks of the world

Published in Simply Living in November 1992.

I was pregnant with my second child. He was due in one week. Plenty of time to send this feature article to Sydney (on a CD by snail mail from Bellingen). Or so I thought. As I was writing, I went into labour. My son was born four hours later. I completed the article, but someone else wrote the practical box (:.

Helen Cushing 28/2/24 Helen Cushing 28/2/24

Yuraygir National Park

Published by Out There magazine in Autumn, 1994. Out There was an adventure travel glossy edited by Lincoln Hall for the iconic outdoor equipment company, Paddy Pallin.

On the mid-north coast of NSW is a slither of national park running along a heavenly stretch of coastline, including the estuary of the Sandon River. A friend had built a wooden sailing dinghy. Three young families loaded up the kids and camping gear and set off to launch the new boat. Those were the days.