A new community garden in Aintree is flourishing and is now offering monthly food production and sustainability workshops.
The expansive Aintree Community Garden includes 55 self-watering and water efficient wicking beds; a 10-tree espalier fruit orchard of apples, pears, apricots, peaches, plums; a composting system; and native plants.
The garden, located in Woodlea estate, received a $75,000 grant from the state and contributions from Woodlea and the managing organisation of the garden We Love Aintree, raising its value to $106,000.
We Love Aintree founding director Jono Ingram said the primary purpose of the garden is to offer educational sustainability and food production workshops, with the organisation offering monthly community workshops and to local schools, kindergartens, and childcare centres.
“Back in 2018, I built an experimental pop-up community garden, which was on some private land that was all going to be a short-term thing, and it turned out to be fairly successful,” Mr Ingram said.
“There was some real interest in people learning how to grow food, gardening together and gathering socially.”
The community can take part in maintenance days and working bee days, where participants can garden with one another and learn horticultural and food production skills.
The next workshop hosted at the garden will be the Growing Food From Kitchen Scraps workshop on Saturday, June 7, from 9.30am.
Visitors are permitted to harvest produce as directed by signage, as long as they are respectful in the amount taken.
Details: weloveaintree.org/aintree-community-garden
