We’re delighted to welcome Katrina Forstner to the team to help us make the most of our outdoor spaces in terms 3 and 4.

She’ll be with us on Friday mornings assisting the community gardeners to develop a forward plan for our gardens and 🌱 explore propagating, planting and composting etc. in more detail.

And at 10.30am each week she’ll have arty gardening activities available in the community shed and/or garden suitable for young families and people of all ages and abilities to join in. Just $5 for some arty crafty fun … and then stay on for morning tea at 11.30am.

Interested? Here’s what’s coming up:

• 16 July - Collect/sort seeds and make and decorate seed packets to take home as a gift or for community distribution via our Seed Library

• 23 July - Smudge sticks with herbs and flowers from the garden

• 30 July - Chase the rainbows away and make a cute cloud wall hanging

• 6 August - Indoor plant propagation and upcycle a can with colour.

It should be a great morning of low key creative fun for grandparents and grandchildren, parents and kinder kids, creative adults and anyone who enjoys spending time doing creative garden based (slightly messy sometimes) activities (with the reward of morning tea afterwards).

Just pop past any Friday morning during school term to check it out and join in. We’ll look forward to seeing you soon.

The latest Grow Local Cook Local workshop was called ‘Chive Talking’ and was all about using winter herbs that are easy to grow at home … and cooking dumplings.

Shu Yun came along to teach us. She is a dumpling expert. In fact she told us that for a couple of years she worked in a dumpling factory in Melbourne where she made 2100 dumplings a day - amazing!

Anyway, here’s a little video we made about what we did in the workshop and what we learnt. If you want to make dumplings yourself you can follow along.

Ingredients

• gyoza wraps

• minced pork

• ginger (pickled or fresh)

• spring onions

• baby spinach leaves

• cabbage

• Chinese rice wine

• sesame oil

• salt and pepper

• sugar

• vegetable oil

Thanks Melbourne Farmers Market for organising this workshop - it was terrific. Thanks City of Yarra for funding this fabulous series.

Book in to upcoming workshops, find recipes and see more photos here.

We’ve got lots coming up in the second half of the year. You can check out our latest program here.

To enrol in all our activities and workshops just visit our website and follow the links from our home page.

This semester we are offering a range of tool-based workshops for all genders and abilities in The Shed.

Our Women in the Shed workshops will all run for 6 weeks. The options include:

• Monday - Women in the Shed Introduction. Participants will be introduced to a range of tools in the shed through working on practical projects. This will run from 10am-3pm and costs $200 or $60 with Learn Local funding.*

• Wednesday - Women in the Shed Introduction (short course). Participants will be introduced to a range of tools in the shed through working on practical projects and will also look at basic home maintenance (how to fix a leaky tap etc.). This will run from 12-3pm and costs $160.

• Thursday - Women in the Shed Projects. Participants who have already completed the Women in the Shed Introduction can bring their own projects along to work on in a supportive and friendly environment. This will run from 10am-3pm and costs $200 or $60 with Learn Local funding.*

We’re also introducing a new Woodworking Projects workshops with Dave, who has run our Men in the Shed program in the past. These 4 week workshops from 1-3pm will cost $80. Participants work on their my own projects and tap into Dave’s expertise.

Keen to book in or find our more? Click here.

Note all of these workshops begin in the week starting Monday 26 July in Term 3 and Monday 18 October in Term 4.

*contact our office to find out more about Learn Local funding.

Cat’s school holiday Lego program is all about wind and water this time and it’s full of friendship, building, learning and fun. Here are some great pictures that Cat took from the first session this week.

Keen to join in? She’s got another session on Tuesday 6 July. So it’s not to late to be part of the fun! You can book in here.

And … did you know Cat also runs a great weekly after school program here at ACC on Monday nights.