SA Autumn Garden Festival, South Australia’s first gardening festival, returns to the Clare Showgrounds this Sunday, with a full program of speakers, workshops, stalls and activities to ensure you get the most out of this planting season.
Come along and hear from some of Australia’s top gardening experts and stock up on the latest plants and accessories.
Gardening Australia luminaries Costa Georgiadis, who will be roving around the site following an opening gala dinner raising funds for Clare Show’s Red Brick Pavillion on Saturday night; and Sophie Thompson, along with native vegetation expert Shaun Kennedy will share their knowledge, among the many guest speakers on the day.
With a continued focus on sustainable gardening, the festival will practice what it preaches, showcasing that there are strategies to implement sustainable practices at all levels.
“We will be using the council’s food and organic waste system, doing it at a festival level to show that if you have big function you can still utilise a food an organic waste system,” festival coordinator and local sustainability educator Paulie Calaby said.
“It’s all very good to do it at a home level, but big shows and events accumulate a lot of organic waste, that just ends up going to landfill. When you go to the city festivals already do this, so why can’t we do it here, we have the same waste systems in place at a council level!”
Kids will keep entertained with a range of free activities including scarecrow making, seed planting, nature crowns, and advice on keeping backyard feathered friends as well as various ducks and chooks on display to pat.
Members of the local Climate Connect group will be manning waste stations to help figure out where to put those more tricky items which sometimes stump even the most ecologically minded.
“When they go off to the commercial composter, you need to make sure it is all the right stuff, so Climate Connect will be helping people in the right direction,” Paulie said.
Sustainability will also be a feature of workshop presentations, with tips on how to save water around your home, utilise repurposed material in beatific ways, and generally make the most of your patch, all while perusing the best in diverse garden supplies.
