Back in 1992, Lennox resident Susan Perrow wrote a story for World Environment Day called Garden of Light.
It was turned into a play by Homegrown Productions in Byron Bay, with music by Sue Gould and local actors/dancers playing the roles of ‘King Didn’t Care,’ the ‘Nature Weaver,’ and the children.
The play was toured around north coast primary schools, and Perrow recalls that Seed Savers contributed small packs of seeds that were given out to each child in the audience to take home and plant after the show.
Seed planting
She says, ‘One strong memory of this was a class of children who were meant to be going to the beach after the performance – but insisted on going straight back to school so they could plant their seeds in the school garden!’
Many years later, she says this story was included in her first collection of therapeutic stories, Healing Stories for Challenging Behaviour (2008), and since then it has been turned into a puppet show by the music department of the University of Manila in the Philippines, using waist-high puppets, and toured through the city slums.
It has also been turned into a play by V-Excel Educational Trust, for special-needs high schools in India.
‘This year, the exciting news is that it has been used by a movement in Europe called Global 2000 – www.global2000.at/en.
Translated play
‘It has been translated into Slovakian and German and beautifully illustrated by a Slovakian artist called Simoonka for conservation brochures and conservation-park billboards for Slovakia and Austria’.
Perrow adds she has just been invited to the Bangalore Literature Festival for Children’s Writers, held in September.
For more information visit Susan’s website.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
