This year I’m running two garden tours for the City of Darebin – for everyone who has been asking when I’m next opening my garden to the public, well, it’s that time of the year once again!

About the Festival

The festival is being held from Saturday 19 – Sunday 27 November, 2016 on weekends and early evenings during the week.

Now in its sixth year, Darebin’s ever popular Backyard Harvest Festival is presented by Darebin City Council in partnership with Darebin Ethnic Communities Council. The November festival celebrates Spring planting, inspiring home gardeners of all ages, skill levels and cultural backgrounds to sow their favourite herbs, vegetables and fruit for the summer harvest.
There is also an Autumn Backyard Harvest festival held as part of the Homemade Food and Wine Festival each May.

This festival is all about local residents sharing skills and knowledge on growing fresh food at home. Many families and cultural groups have been cultivating abundant food gardens in Darebin for years, and this festival showcases and celebrates their achievements.

Previous festival goers have said they made new gardening friends and felt very inspired to give food gardening a go. They loved the cross-generational, cross cultural sharing of gardening and food preparation skills.

There are 16 different home gardens and 7 workshops in this years program, covering everything from water efficient gardens, fruit tree grafting, to keeping chooks and quails.

For the detailed program and to register go to:

• www.darebin.vic.gov.au/backyardharvest or
• contact Tina Stagg on (03) 8470 8673, email tina.stagg@darebin.vic.gov.au

Cost of events: Darebin council is charging – $10 regular, $5 concession, entry for children is free

If you want to see my garden as part of this festival, I will be running the following events:

Angelo’s Fertile Food Forest

Angelo is a sustainable gardening and permaculture presenter, trainer and writer and passionate food forest advocate. His garden won a Darebin Sustainability Award in 2012, and was featured in the prestigious Open Gardens Australia event in 2014 and 2015. Angelo’s high density food forest garden produces a huge diversity of food – stone fruits, berries, herbs and vegetables. What appears to be a verdant tumble of vegetation is actually strategic placement to create synergistic relationships and enhance the microclimate and growing conditions for each plant. This is also an effective pest control technique resulting in a wonderfully abundant organic garden.

Wednesday 23 November
6pm – 7pm
Private Garden in Preston (address provided on booking)
$10 / $5 Concession (children free)
Tickets: www.darebin.vic.gov.au/backyardharvest

Food Forests with Angelo Eliades

Passionate food forest advocate Angelo Eliades from Deep Green Permaculture will demonstrate how a conventional backyard has been transformed into a thriving, productive biodiverse demonstration permaculture food forest garden with over 30 fruit trees, dozens of berries, multitudes of medicinal herbs as well as plenty of exotic edibles from around the world and native bush food plants too.

Sunday 27 November
3.45pm – 4.45pm
Private Garden in Preston (address provided on booking)
$10 / $5 Concession (children free)
Tickets: www.darebin.vic.gov.au/backyardharvest