How cool! This week I headed over to Reservoir Neighbourhood House for our monthly Darebin Neighbourhood House Network meeting and Angie and Lia proudly showed us the amazing community artworks going in on the walls of the local public housing just next door - that they have commissioned utilising a State Government grant.

Six new murals are at various stages of completion. Each is designed by a different artist and each has creative input from the people who live in the building … whose home is being transformed. Clare (who is also working with us on Friday and running Arty Gardening) is a key part of this project, which is an element of the broader Reservoir Revitalisation project.

I came home to our house inspired to start a new community art project of some sort here … it looks great doesn’t it.

Join Clare in the garden on Saturday 30 April from 10am-12pm to learn all about worm towers - and work together as a family (if you like or by yourself if you prefer) to make one for your garden.

Worm towers are tubes that are half buried directly in the garden. You add kitchen scraps in the top and the worms do their magical thing from below - right where you need them the most!

In this workshop we’ll provide all the equipment and materials needed to make your tower and decorate it beautifully so it becomes garden art.

Only $15. Morning tea provided. Enrol here under the workshops tab.

This workshop is part of The Garden State Festival - and supported by The Plant Society and Yarra City Council.

It’s always nice to end the term with a crowd, and it was lovely to have so many people along on Friday morning for Arty Gardening followed by Morning Tea. It was a gorgeous morning.

So many things were happening … we had Crystal drawing flowers, Sandra and Mark picking herbs to make little wardrobe bags to keep the bugs out of clothes and things smelling nice, Debra setting up seed trays (we’re getting some calendula and pak choy seeds sprouting hopefully) and Derek and David helping Clare in the shed to drill the holes in our soon to be finished worm towers.

And then we had more people turn up for morning tea - on the menu the most AMAZING chocolate biscuits made by Kinfolk.

In the garden this week Clare planted some more natives out on the front corner. And we dug some fertiliser in to the second productive garden bed in the front yard so it’s ready for a new crop to be planted when we are back.

Which will be on Tuesday 26 April.

So happy Easter, we hope the Easter bunny visits you … and we’ll see you on the other side of the school holidays! If you need to get in contact with us during this time please email info@alphington.org.au.

This Friday our lovely crafty friends Marie-Louise and Anne added some ADDITIONAL craft bling to our already craft-blinged tree in the community shed garden … now it looks extra fabulous.

Anne uses up all her wool scraps and turns them into pompoms - and we are very grateful to be the lucky recipients.

Thanks ladies! Your crafty goodness is good for us all!

On Friday we took some time to walk around the garden and snip some of our best smelling herbs. We then cut them up even smaller, mixed them together and filled little gauze bags with lovely smelling garden goodness.

Some of our participants (such as Sandra - pictured) took one home to hang in their own wardrobe … and the rest of them went into the seed library for local families to collect.

Also in the seed library were little packets of sweet peas - donated by an anonymous neighbourhood friend. Cute hey?