Costa Georgiadis will be at Parramatta Park on Saturday to give advice on gardening, community gardens, as well as why it’s important to live more sustainably in our day-to-day lives.
Horticulturalist, Adrian Bligh, of Northmead, tending to Parramatta Park’s roses. “The Rosa chinensis viridiflora is the most unusual rose here,’’ he said. ‘‘It was found in China in 1843. People won’t find those in nurseries. But the Rugosa would be the most beautiful.’’ Picture: Gene Ramirez
EXPECT to have blooming good fun at Parramatta Park’s Spring Festival this weekend.
Gardening Australia’s Costa Georgiadis will be at the park’s bowling green on Saturday from 1.30pm as part of the Sustainable Urban Living Festival – Parramatta Park’s first EcoFest — offering gardening tips.
Visitors to the free festival can learn from experts about worm farms and how to grow vegetables in the city, buy plants and heritage seeds, and listen to environmental songs by E-copella.
For the kids there will be face painting and a native animal display.
Event organisers, ParraCAN, are also encouraging locals to ride their bikes to the festival, as there will be complimentary valet parking for bicycles and a heritage bike ride across Parramatta’s 7-Bridges heritage sites, 2pm to 4pm.
‘‘We’re hoping people have a fun day, and that they get information about climate change,’’ ParraCAN secretary Bill Tibben said.
EcoFest is on 9am to 4pm.
Come back Sunday for the Heritage Garden and Rose Open Day, 9am to 3.30pm in the Rumsey Heritage Rose Garden, next to the park’s Pitt Street boundary and the site of Parramatta’s convict-powered lumber yard.
There will be garden tours, a jazz band, a kids planting activity, the Heritage Rose Society will give advice, Parramatta Amateur Bee Keepers Association will talk about backyard beekeeping, you can watch chicks hatch, or buy heritage roses from GreeneNursery.
‘‘Heritage roses are the breed that came before the modern hybrid tea roses,’’ event organiser Sue Clunie said.
“European roses and roses from the Middle East only flower once in spring on the old season’s wood, that’s why you prune them after they flower, but the species that came in from China repeat flower.’’
Horticulturalist Adrian Bligh said there were 584 roses in Rumsey Rose Garden on which he uses 450 bales of sugarcane mulch every year, which helps with weed control and reduces the need for watering.
Also on Sunday, join Ruminations, a free art walk at 2pm, with artists Kath Fries, Simon Alexander Cook, Vanessa White with Karl Krebs, New Neighbours Project: Chrissie Ianssen and Majid Rabel, and WeAve Parramatta.
Stop and smell all those roses while taking in a series of art installations, including golden bandaged trees, a giant pipe rosette, woven gods’ eyes peering out from the climbing roses, and a huge suspended fabric gramophone horn with soundscape in the rotunda trellis.
A Flamenco/Japanese fusion of live music and contemporary dance will be performed on the duck pond.
Details: 8833 5000.