Mater Street Community Garden: so hot right now
Mater Street Community Garden in Collingwood has two ongoing projects: hot composting workshops and a demonstration Food Forest garden.
The hot composting workshops take a hands-on approach to the art – and science – of creating a hot compost. As far as we know, these are the only hot compost workshops running currently in inner-urban Melbourne. Manure, organic kitchen scraps, leaves, wood mulch, grass and garden clippings are layered into a pile and turned every two days. After only 18 days, this creates a rich, sweet smelling, microbial-rich compost. It’s an easy, inexpensive and extremely effective way of restoring the soil ecology of your garden. The next workshop is coming up on Sunday 10 November thanks to local non-profit group Melbourne Urban Permaculture.
The demonstration Food Forest, which is on a 20m2 bed, is Melbourne’s first public food forest designed from the ground up to mimic a forest ecosystem. Food Forests provide a different approach to growing food in the urban environment and are not only sustainable, but beautiful and low maintenance.
Mater Street Community Garden working bees are on the first Sunday of each month from10am, or contact MUP on 0413 219 862 for information or to tour the garden or see www.melbourneurbanpermaculture.org
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