Meet Angie Thomas
Meet Angie Thomas
Angie is the Horticultural Communications Manager for Yates and writes gardening content for the website, Yates Garden Club and social media, together with training materials for both staff and retail partners. She also runs gardening workshops, speaks at garden clubs and shows as well as doing regular radio interviews. Having worked with Yates for more than 20 years, she feels very fortunate to make a living by writing and talking about something she loves – gardening.
When the first panel was formed, Angie was introduced to Smart Approved WaterMark (SAWM) through the Nursery & Garden Industry Association – one of the SAWMs founding partners. Since she’s passionate about gardening she jumped at the chance. Angie is enthused about enabling gardeners to garden despite climate challenges. Her role on the panel actually means she’s been able to help gardeners gain access to water efficient products as well as advising them on great gardening practises.
One of the things she’s enjoyed most about the time on the panel is the opportunity to keep learning and extending her sphere of awareness and passion outside her personal knowledge base. She has really enjoyed regularly meeting with this group of likeminded experts and considers them to be a real brains trust for water.
Angie’s background has focused primarily on home gardeners, however their collective total water usage is substantial and plays an important part in managing our water resources. She stresses how vital it is for home owners to use water wisely, both out in the garden and in their homes, and get people thinking about how and where water is used.
In her own home, being on tank water Angie is very aware of the need to conserve water, including turning off taps when brushing teeth, washing cars on the lawn, running the dishwasher only when it’s full and conserving moisture in the garden. She has a very large vegetable garden and uses soil improvers and wetting agents to help make the most of their water, together with truckloads of mulch. Her 12 year old son regularly helps spread the 15 cubic metre loads of mulch that arrive, and is well versed on the water saving benefits of mulch!
‘Many people would be unaware of the amount of water used in farming, manufacturing and suburban areas’ she says, and that by working with SAWM she can help can raise awareness of water saving technologies and practices and encourage consumers and companies to reflect and act on their water usage.
This last point leads her on to share another thing she finds interesting about Smart WaterMark – the real potential to move this label into other countries and industries. She explains that this is just another new opportunity to learn more that both fascinates and interests her.