Leaf, Root & Fruit offer a number of exciting edible garden workshops and presentations. These workshops are available for local government and council groups, gardening groups and community gardens, business and private sectors. We are available to present these workshops at your own venue, garden or workplace anywhere in Melbourne.
Our workshops are entertaining and informative, and delivered to engage and inspire participants. Each workshop is tailored according to the aims and the audience. Contact us today to discuss your edible gardening workshop requirements.
Some of our workshop topics include:
Edible Gardening in Small Spaces Presentation (1 hour)
An introduction to growing your own vegetables, aimed specifically at container and small space gardeners.
- Plant requirements and how they affect container gardens
- Types of plants suited to container gardens
- The Leaf, Root & Fruit philosophy of Edible Gardening
- Hints and tips on getting the most out of your containers
Planning Your Veggie Patch: A Beginners Guide Presentation (2 hours)
An overview to give participants the confidence to start their first veggie patch. Even experienced edible gardeners will get something out of these presentations.
- Site analysis: working out where in the garden is best to grow plants
- Vertical spaces and vertical gardens
- Raised garden beds: materials, design and wicking beds
- Soil and how to improve it
- Container gardening: common pitfalls for new gardeners
- Seeds vs seedlings and veggie patch layout
- Variety Selection: Heirloom vs Hybrid vs GMO
- Organic fertilizing regimes.
- Mulch
- Watering
- Seasonality, a basic discussion around what to plant and when.
- Planting and harvesting for year round abundance
- Bugs: their importance to gardens (bees, pest/predator interactions) and how to help them get the right balance
- Reducing waste in the garden (composting, worm farming, harvesting unusual parts of plants, seed saving etc)
Introduction to Fruit Tree Management Presentation (2 hours)
An introduction to growing your own fruit. Including:
- Fruit tree basics
- Planning your orchard
- Variety selection
- Fruit tree planting
- Fruit tree care
- Pruning of trees (the very basics)
- Espaliers
Compost Building Workshop (3 hours)
This workshop consists of both theory and practical demonstrations. In a classroom setting, we cover the fundamentals of composting and can then head outside to build a hot compost heap and explore some other composting systems available.
- Nitrogen and Carbon cycles
- Hot and Cold Composting
- Bokashi
- Worm Farms
This workshop can be shortened to include only the theory, or only the practical components.
Designing Raised Garden Beds and Constructing Wicking Beds Workshop (4 hours)
This workshop is an informative demonstration session on the design and construction of raised garden beds and wicking beds. We spend time going through the principles of garden bed design and wicking bed construction. Then there’s an opportunity to get hands on and construct one as part of a team. Ideally you’ll provide the site where the wicking bed is to be permanently located. Otherwise we can find alternative ways for participants to get hands on with demonstration models and temporary garden beds.
This workshop is ideally suited to smaller groups of less than 12 people. Costing for this workshop is dependent on the size and number of wicking beds to be constructed. Contact us to discuss this further.
Backyard Orchards and Edible Forest Gardening Workshop (Full Day Course)
Want to turn your backyard into a resilient, abundant and productive backyard? Want to do it without committing to endless weekends of weeding, pruning, and tending your garden? Then this is the workshop for you!
- Fruit tree basics
- Site analysis
- Food Forests and Edible Forest Gardens
- Planning your orchard or Edible Forest Garden
- Grafting
- Variety selection
- Fruit tree planting
- Fruit tree care
- Pruning of fruit trees
- Crop Protection
Introduction to Edible Garden Design Workshop (Two Day Course)
Want to understand the basics of Edible Garden Design? This workshop will give you some skills and confidence to analyse landscapes and design for aesthetics, efficiency, sustainability and productivity.
- Setting design goals, budgets and constraints
- Constructing Base Maps
- Site analysis
- Reading the Landscape
- Basics of design
- Activities for drawing great ideas from within
- Site access and use
- Landscaping basics
- Planning your orchard or Edible Forest Garden
- How to put your design onto paper
- Project plans and budgets
- Bringing your design to life
Whilst many of the workshops outlined above are routinely delivered in a classroom type environment, we can also head outdoors. This incorporates practical aspects to our workshops to reinforce learning. Consider having us add activities such as these to your workshops:
- preparing worm-farms
- compost heap building
- setting up no dig gardens
- fruit tree pruning
- propagating seeds or cuttings
- planting out garden beds
- constructing raised garden beds or wicking beds
We can also supply handouts and other relevant resource materials, if required.
Contact us today to discuss your workshop requirements.
Please fill out our quick, 3-minute survey to have your say on the types of workshops we run in the future.
