Vertical gardening workshop at Playford CG.

Last Monday, Jelina and myself headed off to the Playford Community Garden to facilitate a workshop on vertical gardening. ‘Facilitate’ is my new word for me rabbiting on about a topic for an hour or so to a receptive audience. This workshop was special too – it sold out within half an hour of being listed on Eventbrite! Wow!

The topic of this workshop was vertical gardening. I presented a little theory first, using slides that Jelina had created based on my info. As you know, I’m not much of an artist so need. J to add her magic touch to the things I write. One day, I’d love Marlon to bring his particular style of art to the mix too!

Topics covered on the day were ‘why vertical gardening?’ positioning, plant types, drainage, potting media, and adding perlite to make things lighter. I also covered ventilation and passive cooling and how you can achieve all of this in a rental home.

We had a little break then the fun began! Hands-on practical work, making of either two designs of vertical garden for everyone!

We used reclaimed 2 litre bottles form Boost Juice Gawler and 3 litre cooking oil bottles from a l9cal cafe to make the designs and pretty soon had a little production line going doing the prep work of drilling while folks cut the bottles to suit their preferred design. Pretty soon, happy folks had a hanging garden and the skills to make new ones at home. all in all, from the enthusiasm people showed, we should be able to keep many kilograms of plastic out of the waste stream!

If you’re interested in reading about vertical gardening, we’ve made the pdf of the notes available right here.

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