Garden Beds ‘grew’ as storm clouds gathered

April 12, 2016

As the western skies grew stormy on Sunday April 10, a crew of keen gardeners put the fi nishing touches to the fi rst of a series of kitchen garden beds at The Living Classroom (TLC) in Bingara.

Under the watchful eye of the designer and tutor, Paul Moulton, the intrepid group, measured, cut, crimped and assembled the second hand roofi ng iron to form a raised mandala garden.

At the start of the day, GLR Manager Rick Hutton explained how raised garden beds offered advantages when preparing kitchen gardens.

Rick drew upon his Permaculture experience to show how clever design can create a garden bed that is cheap, effi cient and productive.

Raised garden beds - The Living classroom

The raised mandala garden bed provides for a multi-edged bed that allows up to 24 students to prepare soil, plant and mulch all within view of their teacher. “It is a practical and sensible design for TLC,” Rick explained. “For very little cost and using mostly second hand materials we have produced a garden teaching area that will enable students to experience the fun and joy of growing their own food.”

The mandala garden is an Asian/ African concept that provides maximum growing area from a limited space.

The raised beds at TLC are 350mm high and thus require very little soil to fi ll them.

It is planned to build eight of these beds thus providing for a sequence of gardens enabling student groups to see how their food plants grow from seed to harvest.

There will some community working bees required at TLC in the next two months. Rick Hutton advises that all are welcome to join in and that the times will be advertised on the Gwydir Shire websites, in local press and on the IGA notice board.

Rick also advises that an Introduction to Welding Course is being planned for the Warialda Automotive TTC soon.

For more information about these and other GLR activities, please contact Rick on 0438 355 197.