Community living – a special story of kindness

My dream goal when moving into The Avenue Maroochydore with my mother Jan in 2021 was for my beautiful mum to be part of a nice community and make some lovely friendships. What happened recently is an incredible story of community, kindness and friendship.

Mum and I relocated to a ground-floor apartment at the end of October. It meant a lot for her to have a special garden in honour of my brother who is no longer with us. Unable to physically create this special garden ourselves, we sourced a quote from a landscaper but the earliest they could start the work was in five months’ time, and it was super expensive. In a conversation, we mentioned the situation to one of our neighbours, Val. The next thing we had Val, her husband Noel and another neighbour Barrie offer to help make mum her special garden a reality before Christmas and they didn’t mess about!

Jan’s courtyard pathway; Kimberley Richards and her mum Jan.

We knew what mum was hoping to achieve and so the process began. Val was supervisor and creative genius; Noel and Barrie were the muscles and didn’t stop working. With an early start on Tuesday, the vision of the garden evolved, and it just got better and better. Mum now has a standing Vegepod to grow herbs, an arbor archway with jasmine planted to eventually cover it, a stunning paved walkway that takes you on a journey through the garden, a birdbath, bird feeders plus Mum’s feature frangipani trees (a traditional variety and a pudica). There are also gardenias lining the pathway for scent and pops of colour with sun patients, including an extra special New Guinea impatiens that was a lovely gift from our neighbours – Jim and Gwenda.

The whole transformation took 32 hours from start to finish. The final stage was the afternoon when the mulch arrived. Val, Noel, Barrie, Margaret, Terry and I set up an assembly line. There were spades and buckets and rakes and brooms – it was a flurry of activity! We laid a cubic metre of mulch in world record time. Mary and Cheryl were cheering us on from the apartments above. Then we all celebrated together with a glass of bubbles and many laughs on our front patio overlooking and admiring our achievement of a tranquil, visually stunning and interactive garden … mum’s special garden. It was even better than any of us originally imagined!

I have been totally blown away by the kindness and generosity that has been shown to us by the community at The Avenue Maroochydore and I think mum still can’t even believe what’s just happened. This exceeds the image of the community I was dreaming of when we made the decision to move here.

We are so grateful we made the move to The Avenue and feel it is a real privilege to be part of this extra special and close-knit community. We look forward to the time we will spend developing our friendships here, and hope to pay it forward and add value to our community over the years to come.

–  Kimberley Richards