Hills Environment Centre

HEC Events

Unlock The Secrets
Of The Natural World

Upcoming Events

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Hills Harvest Exchange
1st Saturday of every month from 10am - noon at HEC.

All welcome.
$10 lifetime membership. 

Hills Harvest Exchange
Peri-Urban Habitat Garden Tour
Saturday 24th October, 11am - 1.30pm tickets from $10pp (sliding scale pricing)

Join Jenny Deans for a presentation and guided garden tour exploring the design journey behind a unique and steep peri-urban Habitat garden.

Learn how the garden was designed to provide year-round habitat and food for native wildlife, improve bushfire resilience, showcase unusual native plants, minimise maintenance, and work with natural processes rather than against them.
We’ll discuss the overall vision, design process, and the many competing priorities that shaped the final result. Along the way, we’ll share practical examples of what succeeded, what we’d do differently, and why a “don’t let perfection be the enemy of good” mindset helped progress and improve the garden.

This tour will be particularly useful for Adelaide Hills residents with larger urban gardens or acreage properties, especially those managing challenging sites with steep slopes and difficult terrain.

 

This session will begin at Hills Environment Centre for a short presentation. Then we will car pool to the site at Skye <10 minutes away.

Please note that this site requires walking up stairs and navigating steep slopes and is unfortunately not suited for those with mobility needs.

The presentation and garden tour will offer honest insights, practical lessons, and inspiration for creating your own habitat garden.

Environmental Grief Support Group (Online)
Wednesday 28th October, 6pm - 7.30pm, online only via zoom

Many of us are feeling the emotional effects of living through environmental and social change. We may feel grief for what is being lost, anxiety about the future, overwhelm, helplessness, anger, sadness, or simply a growing sense that something is deeply out of balance.

After listening to Kriss Kevorkian’s recent webinar, many people expressed a desire for spaces where these feelings can be shared openly and honestly; without judgement, pressure to “stay positive,” or the need to immediately turn feelings into action.

The HEC Environmental Grief Support Group has been created in response to that need.

These gatherings offer a supportive community space to gently explore the emotional impacts of climate change, ecological loss, and the uncertainty of our times. Together, we will create space for reflection, conversation, connection, and mutual care.

This is not therapy, nor a political strategy session or debate space. It is a facilitated community support group for people wanting companionship, understanding, and the opportunity to process difficult feelings alongside others who may feel similarly.

The groups are grounded in the understanding that grief is a natural and healthy response to loss. When grief is shared in community, it can deepen connection, resilience, compassion, and our capacity to remain present to life.

Webinar Wednesday

Approximately once per month, we host a webinar to offer low cost, easily accessible seminars on topics related to the environment and sustainability. 

Past Webinars

Recordings of past webinars are available to watch online. Contact us to access our catalogue of webinars.
We appreciate donations towards the cost of speakers fees. 

 

Annual Events
Quiet Green Achievers

To celebrate World Environment Day in June, we call for nominations from the community for Quiet Green Achievers.

QGA are environmental volunteers, who live sustainably, or encourage others to be more environmentally aware – and do so without seeking recognition or compensation.

 

Nominate a 2026 Quiet Green Achiever here

HEC Quiet Green Achievers
Adelaide Hills Fungi Festival

The first annual Adelaide Hills Fungi Festival was held in May 2025 at Hills Environment Centre. The second was held in June 2026 at Arbury Park Outdoor School.

The inaugural festival welcomed a range of guest speakers covering many aspects of fungi including

  • ecology

  • conservation

  • citizen science

  • cultivation

  • medicine

  • foraging

  • art exhibitions 

The next fungi festival will be in June 2027.
Details to come.