The Community Plate is running a series of Grow Some Food workshops aimed to improve our community’s ability to grow some food at home. Running across both the Frankston and Mornington Peninsula regions, these workshops aim to benefit our health and the health of our earth and address the barriers people face to growing food.
Gardening can slow future global warming by reducing harmful greenhouse gases and increasing carbon storage in soil and plants. Growing some food at home eliminates greenhouse gas emissions from transportation and packaging, it reduces food waste, and it does not involve industrial intervention or harmful chemicals. Gardening also has the added bonus of increasing our physical activity, our fresh food intake, it can provide feelings of satisfaction and it has been shown to improve our mental health by connecting with nature.
The Grow Some Food workshops involve practical demonstrations and hands-on learning experiences for beginner gardeners, information on growing food at home and reducing waste is provided to take home. Participants are encouraged to connect in with their local neighbourhood houses or community gardens in the longer term to access support and their communal growing spaces.
Two well attended workshops took place in 2023 with more planned for 2024. Grow Some Food has been successful in obtaining a Frankston City Council Environmental Sustainability Grant to deliver a further 6 workshops across the Frankston region.
The Community Plate representative, Chris Kirkpatrick said “The workshops are a fun day where everyone enjoys trying their luck at planting out seedlings into a pot to take home and grow. Everyone, no matter how much or how little experience, reported they had learnt things. We invite you along to come and have a try.”
If you are a beginner gardener and you would like to come along to a Grow some food workshop, please get in touch at thecommunityplate@gmail.com and we can connect you with your nearest workshop location. To stay up to date we welcome you to join The Community Plate Network – here.
