Learn the art of perennial edible gardening through practice. This course offers experience in low-input, low-effort edible gardening in inner Melbourne. Learn from the successes and failures of a long-running experiment with one of it’s designer/tinkerers – and seasoned forester and perennial gardener, Rafael Schouten.

Ther is a limit of 10 places to keep things practical and focussed.
The cost of the two-day course is $180, or $100 for just one of the days. Some gardening or horticulture experience is desirable.

Email: [email protected] to book.

Activities include:

Day 1: Plants
– Summer/Autumn pruning of fruit trees. Learn pruning techniques, tree growth habits.

– Learn to graft eggplant trees.

– Practise flexible ongoing design: Prune, replant and reorganise for changing conditions.

– Learn to prepare nopal (prickly pear pads) for lunch.

Day 2: Infrastructure (and plants too, of course…)

– Real, low tech “vertical gardening”. Learn about growth and trellacing for an amazing collection of edible vines – grapes, kiwis, hops, yams, groundnuts and chokos. and ad-hoc espalier.

– Learn basic water harvesting and its pitfalls from multiple permanent systems on the site – washing machine greywater with HDPE piping, gravity fed shower greywater with PVC, and rainwater diversion.

– Learn to prepair perennial vegetables such as stem taro and choco vine for lunch.