Come join the Open Orchard and Social Landscapes for a session on Orchard Care and Maintenance in Hillside Gardens Park.

Some trees need summer pruning, others need mulching; we will plant russian comfrey around them to help build healthy soil and reduce the cages of larger trees to free up the crown.

Learn the basics of Permaculture Design on this two-day introduction workshop and be ready to try it out in your garden, your workplace and your life.

This two-hour session will make you familiar with common garden pests such as slugs, aphids, blight and pigeons. We’ll be looking at practical tools and strategies to overcome these unwanted visitors, and implementing some tried and tested techniques to help prevent them.

The workshop will explore what type of vegetables are suitable to grow late in the year, which ones can be planted from seed and which ones as young plants. In a practical exercise we will prepare the ground, sow and plant and plan how we will need to care for them as they become established.

We will examine what the components of good soil are, how we can keep it healthy for producing food and flowers and how to improve it using different composting methods. We’ll explore techniques that are applicable on different scales, from our community garden to containers of pots on a balcony.