On Saturday 14 May, in the afternoon, Nadine opened up her garden in Church Street, a big long family garden near the city centre, with various fruit trees, many different kinds of vegetables and herbs, an experimental edible hedge, a walk-in plastic greenhouse, a bucket pond etc.
Nadine’s guided tours were really inspiring. She has a lot of knowledge and experience, and there is something in the way she talks about it all that makes it both informative and entertaining, a winning combination.
An interesting aspect of Nadine’s vegetable garden was her frequent use of the technique of Companion Planting as a natural form of pest control and to increase yields. Basically, planting different types of plants together that are known to help each other to grow or to deter or distract pests!
Apart from explaining it on her guided tours, Nadine also put up a poster describing how the concept had been applied to her garden. There is a copy of the Companion Planting in Nadine’s Garden poster here.
Everybody thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon, as you can tell from the pictures. There are a few more pictures here.
Bonus: the last couple of photos in the album linked to above show Nadine’s “Raised Bed Community Garden” project. When a large publicity board on the corner of her street was removed, and it became clear that there were no plans to replace it, Nadine and several neighbours decided to give the corner a green make-over. Both help and feedback from fellow residents have been amazing!
Another year has gone by. Time for our Annual General Meeting aka AGM again.
