As part of its 25th anniversary celebrations, Junior Landcare is inviting Australians young and old to pen a love note to our beautiful country. The winner of the school-aged letter-writing competition will receive a visit to their place of learning from Costa Georgiadis, celebrity gardener, TV personality, and Junior Landcare Ambassador.

“I will organise for Costa to go and visit their school, it will be an education piece for him to talk about what Junior Landcare is because he’s done some really amazing things,” says Karen Walsh, stakeholder engagement manager with Landcare Australia.

Founded in 1986, parent organisation Landcare Australia aims to encourage people to look after the Earth through programs, groups and education.

“It really is just about people taking small steps to look after the Earth and our vital agricultural lands to ensure that we can not only survive, but we have an environment in which we thrive,” says Ms Walsh.

The junior wing of the organisation hopes to engage young audiences through tangible activities that can foster a sense of responsibility for and love of the land. As the school holidays approach, she encourages parents and carers to have a look on the website and find an activity that encourages children to put down their devices.

“Basically, the stats are saying that our children are spending 30 per cent of their waking hours on devices – it’s a lot. We really want to get kids out there and involved,” she says. “They can go on to the Junior Landcare website and print off some activities; it might be that you go through your local area and you go on a little bug hunt, or maybe you go for a bush walk.”

When it comes to penning a love letter, there are two letter templates on the website: one for children who might need a bit of help starting, with prompts for their name, age and favourite activities to do outside; the other is blank, left open for the heart to lead the way.

Send your letter and an accompanying photo to Junior Landcare to go up on the website. The top 50 letters will be printed in The Land newspaper, while a winner will be selected at random to receive a school visit by Costa.

Excited to be a part of the project and having penned his own letter, Mr Georgiadis says the campaign is about getting outdoors, and making time to sit and reflect on what we feel in our hearts.

“For me, the key to this project is the word ‘love’. It’s an opportunity to see that it is a strength to step up and say, ‘I love this place – and because I love it, I want to learn more about it and protect it!” he says.

“There is a lot of science out there about how we can protect the planet; this campaign is using not just the head but also the heart when it comes to taking action for the planet.”

The Junior Landcare ambassador is passionate about inspiring youth to be involved in caring for the land. He says children today have experienced floods, heatwaves, drought and a pandemic, which makes them conscious of the world around them and the issues our environment is facing.

“Being outdoors and in nature is not just a therapeutic space for children to recharge but also a space where they can feel empowered to make a visible impact on the world around them,” Mr Georgiadis says.

“From something as simple as setting up a water station for wildlife on a hot day to making a bug hotel from tin cans. I love children’s positivity and proclivity for action – two great ingredients for caring for the land and inspiring others to do the same.”

From growing up on a farm in rural NSW to a working in the Department of Agriculture for a decade, Ms Walsh is passionate about sustainable agriculture. She says that environmental and agricultural outcomes don’t have to be at odds with one another, that they actually go hand in hand.

“This campaign correlates with Biodiversity Month (September), which is a celebration of the different types of biodiversity. It’s really important for me to keep increasing people’s awareness, not just of this campaign alone, but of the work that Landcare Australia is doing to create awareness in both the agriculture sector and in the environmental sector,” says Ms Walsh.

Everybody has a role to play, she says; even if it is recycling at home, volunteering with a local Landcare group or planting native fauna, everyone can and should do something. Starting a conversation at the dinner table is an easy first step, something she and her husband regularly do with their two children, Annie and Mikey.

“It’s about us ensuring that we leave a planet for future generations so that they can enjoy it and that we’re looking after the species, plants, animals,” says Ms Walsh.

According to Mikey, without people like his mum looking after our land, we wouldn’t have anything to eat or anywhere to play.

“We wouldn’t have anything to eat or drink and nothing would grow on trees. The koalas eat gum trees and if they burn down, they wouldn’t have anything to eat,” agrees Annie.

Both writing love letters to the land, the siblings have some great ideas on how they and other children could help our land.

“We can try not to litter. If you litter on the beach, the animals in the sea are going to eat it and they will get very sick and die,” says Annie.

“We can stop littering,” agrees Mikey. “I mow the lawn for Dad, I water the grass for Dad. Not to put recycling in the rubbish bin because then we can recycle it and make new things instead of chucking it out and burning it.”

Write your own Love Letter to the Land with Junior Landcare via the website: juniorlandcare.org.au

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