Season grand opening plus annual seed swap day with talks and workshops. Refreshments including soup and cake will be available.

Programme

11am-5pm:     Seed Swap

                     Bring seeds to swap and pick up some new varieties to try. No seeds? No problem! Everyone is welcome to come and take part and pick up vegetable and flower seeds to take home and try growing.

11:30am          2012 garden opening with Elise Benjamin, Mayor of Oxford

                     Oxford’s mayor, Elise Benjamin, will officially opening the garden for the 2012 season. She will also be announcing the gardens ‘name the cob oven’ competition.

12-1pm:           talk – Oxford Botanic Gardens vegetable growing project

                     Jim Penny, botanical horticulturist at the Oxford Botanic Garden, will speak about the botanic garden’s vegetable growing project, the importance of growing vegetables and seed saving, and can answer your questions on these topics.

1:30-3pm:       Seeds, germination and potting

                     Phil Pritchard of Oxford Permaculture, will lead a practical session on seed saving, how to undertake simple germination tests to see if your seeds will grow, and you can pot up some seeds and take these home with you.

3:30-4:30pm   talk – Cultivate – people powered food

                     Discussion with Dan Betterton from Cultivate. Dan will speak about this exciting new social enterprise and how they will be using heritage vegetable varieties, bringing these to locals via their veg van.

                     Cultivate is Oxford’s new social enterprise aiming to make great local, food fairly-priced, convenient and accessible to more people in and around Oxford