FREMANTLE’S growing push to green its streets and strip back hard surfaces will take centre stage this weekend when ReWild Fest takes over PIAZZA Fremantle.
The free festival on Saturday is aimed at inspiring people to rethink how urban spaces are used, with talks, workshops and stalls focused on trees, plants and rewilding.
The event is being organised by Freo DoC, the central Fremantle Town Team, which in 2024 secured a $100,000 Town Teams Streets Alive grant to de-pave and rewild part of William Street with the City of Fremantle.
Freo DoC member and organiser Kate Hulett said the festival was about giving people practical ideas they could take home.
• Freo DoC member Kate Hulett says while cities around the world are greening up, Perth is lagging behind. Photo by Steve Grant
“This is about showing what’s possible when communities come together to reimagine their cities and streets,” she said.
“ReWild Fest gives people the knowledge, inspiration and confidence to get involved – not just in this project, but in rewilding efforts more broadly.”
Among the headline speakers will be Murdoch university researcher Grey Coupland, who studies Miyawaki pocket forests.
“The idea of Miyawaki pocket forests is something we could really embrace here,” Ms Hulett said.
“That’s something that [SpaceMarkt’s Sarah Booth] and I noticed a lot on our European journey; even in the most concrete laden inner city space they would find a little patch to grow a Miyawaki forest, which is cool.
“But I think the crowd pleaser will be Sabrina Hahn and Josh Byrne, and we’re going to have them as a duo, answering questions together and chatting about gardening,” Ms Hulett said.
“The talks will all be open air, so people can just kind of sit down or walk through, drop in, drop out.”
Ms Hulett said Perth had been slower than many other cities to embrace large-scale urban greening.
Sprawl
One of the issues is the way that our city has grown through sprawl, and the easiest way to build is to have a clear big block of land,” she said.
“So we tend to go the quick and easiest way, which means you’re killing everything alive to make a big yellow sand patch.”
She said trees were often seen only as a cost rather than an asset.
“I think there’s a thing in Australia where trees are evaluated by cost, so their cost of insurance and their cost of maintenance, but they’re not given a value for the benefit, for the shade, for the cooling, for the oxygen, for the biodiversity,” she said.
“And the crazy thing is, we even refer to the nice suburbs as the leafy green suburbs.”
Ms Hulett said there was enormous potential to increase planting in Fremantle’s CBD.
“The opportunity is enormous, because if you really start looking at it, if you stand on a corner of a street, say you’re somewhere in High Street on a corner, the road and the path either side are so wide, there is so much pavement,” she said.
“Trust me, when you start looking at how much pavement there is, you can’t stop seeing pavement and hard surfaces.”
She said more planting would not only make the city cooler and greener, but also help with drainage.
“Whenever I’m walking through Fremantle, when it’s been raining and there’s these huge puddles everywhere, I think, ‘you know what stops puddles – planting, because the water has somewhere to go’,” she said.
PIAZZA Fremantle owner Bronwyn Owen said the festival fitted with the precinct’s role as a community gathering place.
“PIAZZA is about creating space for people to come together, whether through art, food, culture, or, in this case, nature,” she said.
“ReWild Fest is a natural fit, it brings education, creativity, and community into the heart of Fremantle, supporting a project that will have a lasting and positive impact on the city.”
ReWild Fest runs from 11am to 5pm on Saturday at PIAZZA on South Terrace.
by STEVE GRANT