Join us for a 1-hour Q&A session with expert gardeners Karen Sutherland and Scott Hitchins, who will happily answer your gardening questions. Stay for some snacks and a chance to meet and chat with other local gardeners. This event is a great opportunity to meet new people, build connections and perhaps even make lifelong friends. Please feel free to bring any surplus produce, seeds, cuttings, plants, gardening magazines etc. to swap and share! Presented by Brimbank City Council.  

This event is for Naarm/Melbourne gardeners only. If you live outside this area, please contact your council to find out what free sustainable gardening events are available locally.

Karen Sutherland has spent her life in the garden, from an 8-year-old in her vegie patch to training at CERES, Melbourne Zoological Gardens, an Associate Diploma in Applied Science from Melbourne University (Burnley), and a Permaculture Design Certificate with Bill Mollison. She has run her own horticultural business for 35 years and 12 years ago shifted her focus to edible plants as ‘Edible Eden Design’. She writes, teaches, speaks, and consults on a range of edible gardening projects and collaborative indigenous interpretive gardens, and has regular columns in ABC Organic Gardener Magazine and Green Magazine.

Scott Hitchins has been working with sustainable, food-producing gardens for most of his life. With qualifications in biological science, permaculture design, education, and a founding member of Werribee Park Heritage Orchard, he has been running workshops and providing garden-design advice to local councils, schools, and other community groups for many years, presenting useful facts and skills in a fun and engaging manner. To quote Scott in a recent interview, “get me talking about sustainable gardening and you’ll never shut me up!”

This venue is wheelchair accessible. If you have any access or support questions or requirements in order to participate fully (eg. interpreter), please let us know at least two weeks prior to the event and we will be pleased to assist you. Photos will be taken at this event, but there is an option to opt out on the day.

This ‘My Smart Garden’ event is proudly presented by Brimbank City Council on the land of Wurundjeri and Boon Wurung peoples of the Kulin nation. My Smart Garden pays our respect to Elders past, present and emerging and acknowledges that First Nations peoples have cared for Country sustainably for tens of thousands of years.