The Hope Garden landscaping isn’t quite finished, so we‘re unable to plant it up yet. Luckily, Pen Y Foidr allotments let us plant their Welsh varieties of apple, plum, damson and pear, along the northern hedge just to the rear of the Hope Garden.
Considering the weather, a considerable crowd gathered for the pruning workshop on a cold Saturday. Martin Hayes has been designing, planting and pruning orchards for many years and is much sought after for his engaging, no-nonsense approach.
Martin Hayes has a lifetime‘s experience of planting and pruning fruit trees. In this free workshop running from 10am , he will show you the basics of how to prune and why, and also when to prune. There are four sites to visit, so there will be plenty of opportunity for you to practise what he preaches.
The free Hope Garden workshops continued with a visit to Stephanie Hafferty’s Half Acre Homestead near Lampeter, where she showed the fully subscribed and assembled crowd a range of perennial and perennialised annual vegetables in her chokka garden.
Maybe because of the relatively low number of guests, the workshop at Cilgerran Village Hall felt really productive and engaged, and covered a lot of ground, explaining the ideas behind the community space in a wildlife forest garden that is the Hope Garden.