Release your inner butterfly

Flutter down to Fig Tree Community Garden at 10am on Sunday 27th November for your chance to make a mark! A butterfly shaped mark that is, on the wall of the Croatian Club, adjacent to the Garden. As part of ‘Seed’, an ongoing series of Octapod initiated art workshops, visitors to the garden will invited to paint a fine flock of butterflies on the Croatian Club's wall.

With the Croatian Club fast establishing itself as an edgy and eclectic music venue, this is a great chance to contribute to the rock n’ roll lifestyle of Newcastle’s upcoming bands. In future years, when rock historians pore through early band photographs of tomorrow’s legendary musicians, imagine their delight when they see your butterfly lurking in the background of the shot!

Seed is facilitated by artists Helen Hopcroft, Trevor Horsnell and Karen Robinson Smith. If you can’t draw for diddly, no need to stress: we’ll have an easy to use butterfly stencil with plenty of assistance on hand. The workshop is suitable for both children and adults, but please wear old clothes, as butterflies can be messy creatures. 

Resources

Our excellent guides under the 'Resources' section have been recently updated. Be sure to check them out for some great advice on:

+ Companion Planting

+ Natural Pest Control

+ Natural Pest Sprays

July Working Bee & Mural Design

Well, it seems Spring has decided to make an early appearance and everyone took advantage of the beautiful weather and headed down to Fig Tree to get their hands dirty. The chicken palace got a good spring clean thanks to some lovely volunteers.

The chickens also got some volunteer cuddles.

There were wheelbarrow loads of fresh compost to spread over our new raised beds.

And lots of new seedlings were planted in preperation for a spring harvest.

The kids (and the big kids amongst us) got their hands dirty in a different way...by designing and painting their own garden bird as part of the Octapod mural grant work.

And everyone else got busy with their bird painting.

After all that hard work, it was time to get some lunch prepared.

And have a cook up in the wood-fired oven.

Thank you to all the wonderful, hard-working volunteers who came to help in the garden and take part in the inspiring mural process. We hope you got as much out of it was the garden did.

Getting Tanked

In preperation for the hot summer ahead, we are installing a new water tank at the far end of the garden as part of our drought-prevention plan, made possible by our partnership with mentoring program JobQuest. This will bring the total number of water tanks at Fig Tree to three.

It was all hands on deck as the Working Party, with the help of volunteers, shifted barrowloads of cement from truck to formwork to form the base for which the tank will sit.

New Garden Beds

The Fig Tree Community Garden Working Party have been busy installing new garden beds over the last couple of months, thanks to funds made available via the NSW Government's Community Building Partnership Program. This grant enables Fig Tree Community Garden to not only upgrade garden beds, but also build wheelchair and pram friendly pathways and upgrade the outdoor kitchen. The first stage of the grant works is building the beds, then we will move onto the pathways, then the kitchen. All works will be completed by the end of 2011.

If you are interested in volunteering to assist with any major works, the Working Party are at the garden every Thursday from 9.30am to 2.30pm. Feel free to drop by and introduce yourself. Any spare hands makes a huge difference to getting our grant work completed on time, which is greatly appreciated.