Jerry Coleby-Williams Travels from Brisbane, QLD

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Agriculture
Environment
Media
Motivational

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Jerry Coleby-Williams is an internationally experienced horticultural botanist, a conservationist, a writer and Director of the Seed Savers’ Network Inc. He is the Patron of the National Toxics Network Inc.

Initially trained at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (UK) and the Royal Horticultural Society (UK), Jerry is qualified in horticultural estate management, soft landscape design, arboriculture, conservation, horticultural and botanical sciences.

Jerry has managed plant production nurseries, urban forests, heritage parks, one of London’s busiest garden centres, and he helped establish Mt Annan Native Botanic Garden (NSW). For twelve years, Jerry managed the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney. His design of the Rare & Threatened Plants Garden (1998) launched a career in radio, magazine writing, public speaking and television.

In 2003, Jerry created Bellis, a unique, affordable, sustainable house and garden in subtropical Brisbane by retrofitting a century old Queenslander house. Bellis is carbon positive, exporting solar electricity, sequestering carbon dioxide, recycling all waste water for food growing in a water sensitive landscape that mitigates localised flooding and sustains production during drought.

Growing 500 kinds of plant, the food garden feeds the household while the ornamental front garden is designed to deal with predicted climate change.

Over 520 species of animal, including twenty four species of bee, and about six new insect species, as yet undescribed by science, live at or visit Bellis.

Retrofitting Bellis cost less than buying an average family four wheel drive car and its ongoing benefits include reduced household bills, healthy food and peace of mind.