BARCOO Community Garden in Toormina is opening its gates to the public for a free educational, social day on Wednesday, 9 November.

Peter Lewis, a permaculture garden educator/facilitator at Barcoo gardens is hosting two workshops.

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Starting at 9.30am is ‘How to build good soil’, which provides examples, methods and resources to improve soil fertility.

“Of all the things you can easily do something about that makes a huge difference, fertility tops the list,” Peter told News Of The Area.

“It’s a lot like our gut bacteria that can either make us healthy or sick depending on what we feed it.

“We’ll be looking at what soil bacteria need.”

At 10.30am Peter tackles the hardest thing to change – the garden’s aspect.

“Sunlight and lack of sunlight can make or break a garden.

“We’ll be looking at ways to overcome issues and working with the aspect by using heat radiated from walls, hot houses and ‘stacking’ of plantings.”

Peter will explain how and why a 3D model of your garden is useful.

The first afternoon session, at 1.30pm, is hosted by Alison Heeley, President of Northbank Community Garden in Bellingen and Christine Smith, the on-site manager at Barcoo community gardens.

They will demonstrate how seed saving can preserve good varieties that have superior taste or are resistant to pest attack, or both, to keep favourite varieties for replanting.

“Seed saving helps keep costs down and preserves varieties that have done well in the past.

“Good for seed swapping with other growers,” said Peter.

The last workshop, at 2.30pm, with Phil Bowden from Coffs Community Garden, demonstrates how easy it is to grow fruit trees from cuttings.

“Alison and Christine will share what species are so easy to grow you’d be crazy not to give it a go.

“Again, it saves money and is good for neighbourhood swapping.”

All four workshops are 20 minute mini-tutorials with an opportunity to engage and ask questions after each workshop.

On Open Day, the garden will open from 8.30am to 4pm with guide ambassadors available.

Refreshments of teas and coffee will be available throughout the day.

A hot barbecue and garden veggies lunch will be served from 11.30am to 12.30pm.

The garden is located on a vacant house lot of 700 sqm at 22 Barcoo Court, Toormina.

It was established to develop gardening skills and food security for the general community of Toormina and particularly the residents of Barcoo Court.

The project is auspiced by Mission Australia.

Peter Lewis’ urban gardening experience was influenced by living in Havana, Cuba for a year in 1998.

“My partner Linda Woodrow taught permaculture there in an urban setting as part of an AusAID program,” said Peter.

“Cuba had been economically dependent on trade with Russia and when that stopped in the late 1980s their agriculture sector collapsed.

“They had no market, they had no fuel to run tractors and they had no cheap grain for feedlots and intensive animal rearing.

“In many ways they were similar to Australia as a primary producer country and the Cubans had to solve food production in the same way Australians faced during Covid lockdown by finding ways to grow food in small spaces for local consumption.

“We increasingly face food supply issues and having access to locally grown food and the knowledge to grow your own helps reduce that dependency.

“At Barcoo Community Garden we’ve been focusing on getting garden experience and knowledge to have ‘harvest success’ with food that people in the area are familiar with and want to eat,” closed Peter.

For more information visit www.urbanagriculturemonth.org.au/event/open-day-at-barcoo-community-garden

By Andres FERRARI