Horticultural & Gardening Festival 2015

The inaugural Horticultural & Gardening Festival is Melbourne’s only big Spring gardening show and is on right now at the Melbourne Showgrounds! This three day festival is focused on Growing, Gardening and Cooking. There will be everything from rare plant growers and specialist plant nurseries to gardening tools and products.
With an array of experts sharing their knowledge, this is a rare opportunity to have so many key industry figures at one event. ABC Organic Gardener’s Peter Cundall, will formally open the festival, provide a crop-rotation demonstration and more – he will only appear on the opening today so be sure not to miss him!
The Display Gardens will feature the best of landscape design and is a must-see part of the event! Judging the gardens will be a panel headed by our very own Ian Barker, joined by Carolyn Blackman and Wayne Van Balen.

“Being asked to be a head judge at the upcoming Horticultural & Gardening Festival is a real honour. Having designed and built a number of display gardens in the past, I believe I have a great understanding of what it takes to create a garden for the public to enjoy”.

For those who are interested in naturalistic planting, Ian will be giving a presentation on Saturday called ‘Naturalistic Perennial Planting in Australia’, where he will give a brief history of his own work and explain how he became so passionate about the naturalistic planting style he is known for today. He will speak about some of the designers who have inspired his work and will walk the audience through a real life design project detailing the ways in which a planting palette can be built up to achieve a modern perennial or intermingled planting mix.
Using images, he’ll illustrate the different layers, from the scatter plants through to the intermingled planting palette and will show how a variety of colours can be mixed at different percentages to achieve one overall look. Ian will explain how the perennial movement that is now mainstream across Europe and North America can be adapted to suit Australian conditions in a sustainable way.
With an amazing line up of speakers and some truly fantastic and informative displays, the Horticultural and Gardening Festival 2015 will be well worth a visit!

9th-11th October 2015