PERMACULTURE GARDENING FOR BEGINNERS, with ADRIAN ROCHE

Do you have a garden or want to get one going? Are you curious about what this 'permaculture' stuff is all about? Are you familiar with the 12 principles of permaculture but aren't quite sure how they can be put into practice?

This four-part practical permaculture gardening course is arranged to help you gain the fundamental knowledge and skills to approach your space in a way that works with nature, for your garden, and for you.

Adrian Roche, our Kelmarna Gardens Community & Site Manager and life-long gardener, will walk you through the basic methods and practices to give you a sturdy foundation for gardening effectively in your space.

Part 1 - PROPAGATION, PLANTING & COMPOSTING

Sunday 6 June - 9am to 12pm (3 hours)

This first part will begin with an introduction to the principles of permaculture and invite you to share about your experience, your site, and your objectives in the garden.

Using Kelmarna Gardens and your own garden as context, Adrian will guide you to use the whole systems thinking approach of permaculture to consider planning a garden bed - from crop species and seasonality to spacing and plant pairings. Then, in a bare garden plot, your group will get hands on to start three fundamental process that you will continue to observe and interact with over the course of the 4-part series.

1) Planting seedlings - you will talk about raising seedlings versus direct sowing, and practice planting seedlings according to effective spacing and growth habits.

2) Seed sowing - you will discuss how to time your sowing based on the maturity of current crops, and practice sowing seeds in trays to raise into seedlings.

3) Compost making - you will learn about composting as a method for repurposing organic matter, and practice layering ingredients in a basic aerobic compost pile.

Finally, you will discuss soil sampling to look forward to your homework for the next session (Part 2 - Soil Health & Fertility), to bring in a jar of soil from your garden. Be ready to talk about your garden, features of your site, what you know about the soil, and how well your plants grow in it.

Adrian has been gardening for 27 years, the bulk of which has been at Kelmarna Gardens as lead gardener, site manager, mentor, and general face of the gardens for much of our community. He is driven by a desire to help build a sustainable future for our humanity, which leads him to focus on food production and the role of gardening for connecting people and building community. His philosophical touchstone is permaculture, which feeds his desire to understand the natural world in order to work with, benefit from and coexist within it.