Perth Voice Interactive

PERTH city councillor Lily Chen has been endorsed by the Liberal party to contest Mirrabooka at next year’s state election. Labor’s Janine Freeman holds the seat with a 4.6 per cent margin. Announcing her candidacy on Facebook, Ms Chen says, “it is a very marginal seat but I love challenges”. “I treasure the opportunity the Liberal party gave to me and I will do my best with all of your support to win this seat and to serve the community I am related to,” the councillor and lawyer says, noting her first family home was in the area and one of her offices is out that way too. The Liberals confirmed that incumbent MPs will recontest their seats in Perth (Eleni Evangel), Mt Lawley (Michael Sutherland) and Morley (Ian Britza).

IT might look like the line outside an Apple store the night before a slightly larger iPhone gets released, but this is just the crowd at the Vincent native plant sale on the weekend. It was a bumper turnout this year with 252 people buying plants (up from 172 a year ago). Mayor John Carey says “it’s going gangbusters… it has been the biggest turnout to date, we think that’s because it coincides with the city’s Adopt-a-Verge program”. That was an idea he had a couple years back where the council would grade and mulch a verge, then give residents vouchers for 20 free native plants and then let them look after their new verge garden (other residents get tubestock plants on the super cheap). It’s been so popular there’s now a big waiting list to get the verge done, so Mr Carey says the council’s going to look at expanding the budget to get to more people. As to why so many people are preferring native verges over the old English rose gardens, Mr Carey says “I think there’s a realisation that it’s so critical to making our neighbourhoods genuinely liveable. They want their verges to be green and to beautify the street but it’s also [because] with growing density our verges are another important green space.”

THE Beaufort Street festival might’ve packed it in and the Angove Street festival has been delayed for at least a year, but the Mt Hawthorn Streets and Laneways festival will roll on in 2016. At its debut last year more than 35,000 turned out to the event put together by the Mt Hawthorn hub. While Beaufort Street trended towards a big music festival that saw massive numbers pack the street (up to 160,000 in its final year), Mt Hawthorn goes for a more boutique-village style festival. This year it’ll have Ladybird Lane with 40 WA female artisans spruiking wares.The Mt Hawthorn traders are rolling street food out onto the pavement, and Greening Vincent is back to cater for all the area’s hippies and green thumbs. The free festival runs May 1, 11am to 7pm and there’s a full program at http://www.mthawthornhub.com.au