March Working Bee

Thank you to all 50 people who turned up on Saturday for our monthly working bee and the Harvest Swapmeet. With so many enthusiastic people it's no wonder we got so much done.

We extended the chalk wall to include a space to list all the jobs that still need doing.

We continued pruning the apple trees alongside the library.

Then we mulched all the branches and covered them in lime to get rid of the apple scab.

We dug up a hefty crop of potatoes.

We dug in some donated mushroom compost. (Thanks Dougmore!)

We planted some seedlings.

We discussed the medicinal herb garden we are going to plant at Rea Lands Park. (If you'd like to be included in these discussions and plantings, please email us.)

We swapped goodies from our home gardens at the monthly Harvest Swapmeet.

And we marvelled at how lucky we are to live in a community with such abundance.

Virginia of the Herbs

Virginia Langsford, a local herbalist and botanist, met with Mara, Lena and Patrick at Rea Lands Park today to discuss the place of medicinal plants in the garden and the teaching of their benefits in the community. Behind our meeting lay the enormous pumpkin patch, demonstrating the success of multilevel garden ecologies. Virginia is keen to teach people the healing properties of plants for humans, our kin animals, the health of the soil and companion plant relationships.

As Rea Lands is a perennial food forest garden in the making, it seems only natural perennial herbs and other medicinal plants be planted among the fruit and nut trees for both culinary and medicinal uses. 

As we're getting so many people to the monthly working bees at Albert Street, we thought Virginia could meet us there on occasions and poach herb-orientated folk to join her for both planting and learning sessions at Rea Lands Park. Virginia will let us know which working bee Saturdays she can come and we'll do a little publicity before hand... Speaking of which...

Our meeting today was brief and very inspiring, so if you're herb inclined and want to keep informed about the working bees with Virginia email us to go on the mail out list.