Expert guides ready to open up their gardens

From worm farms to fruit trees and soil science to successful seedlings, there’s a big range of workshops on offer to the community as part of this year’s Edible Gardens Festival on May 24 25.

The annual not-for-profit food growing and sustainability festival features open gardens for locals to visit over two days, but the event also includes a series of in-depth afternoon workshops with expert teachers.

The workshops include Promoting Abundance in Fruit Trees with David Hatwell from Capes Horticulture, where participants can join this hands-on masterclass to learn about fruit tree care and maintenance, mulching and fertilising, organic practices, boosting soil health for fruit trees, planting, selecting varieties, pruning, pests and diseases, protecting the harvest and orchard design.

Soil guru Mark Tupman from Productive Ecology is back, this time to teach a Seriously Fascinating Soil Science workshop, while Amy Dyson, a former nutritionist who now runs Plumo Market Garden, is running a Successful Seedlings for a Glowing Gut workshop.

Also on offer is an Ultimate Worm Farming workshop with Jamie and Lara McCall from Burnside Organic Farm. They have one of the biggest and best worm farms in the region, and have taken worm farming to an almost biblical scale. The final workshop is a paddock-to-plate tour of the Margaret River Organic Farmer property – a thriving regenerative farm run by Laura and Lawson Bailey.

“We’re really excited to bring a whole new program of workshops to this year’s Edible Gardens Festival,” says event organiser Trevor Paddenburg.

“Visiting the open gardens gives everyone the chance to pick up loads of ideas, knowledge and inspiration for your patch, and then the afternoon workshops build on that and dive deeper into a topic. It’s a fantastic opportunity to learn from one of the incredible local experts who are running each session.”

During the weekend, three different gardens are open from 9am to 1pm, where locals can hear from the gardeners who created them, pick up tips and inspiration, catch a live demonstration, and buy delicious local produce, food and drinks.

Saturday and Sunday day tickets are $20 for adults and free for children 16 and under. Afternoon workshops are ticketed separately at $25 each.

Margaret River Mitre 10 is again supporting the festival, with ticket-holders able to cash in on a 20 per cent discount on all fruit trees, potted plants and vegetable seedlings. Yates Australia is donating thank-you gifts for the gardeners and volunteers.

See www.ediblegardensfestival.au for tickets, info and the full program.