Se7en Visits the Veld and Sea Team for a Gardening Workshop…

Last week I visited the Good Hope Nursery for a Gardening Workshop and it was fantastic. We have been visiting them for years and years… and the last time we visited we learnt all about foraging. They have branched out from a nursery to Food Foraging and Gardening Workshops… you have to take a look at their Veld and Sea website.

The Good Hope Nursery have a series of garden workshops running at the moment: Water, Earth, Air and Fire… I attended the one on water and I have to say there was a lot more information than I expected. I thought I would learn a little bit about conserving water, and watering wisely… there was that, but so much more…

How to harvest and store your rainfall, how to set up a filtration system for your grey water… I was fascinated from the get go. This was all new to me. We are living through an extreme drought situation, and I don’t know anyone that doesn’t store their shower water, or their dish water, or flush the toilet with a bucket of grey water rather than using water from the tank. In fact we have discovered that our grey water is quite enough to keep our toilets flushing and our garden well watered. It takes longer of course, but isn’t that the case when you are doing the right thing. For those of you reading through this, that aren’t living through a drought and are wondering what grey water is: Grey water is water that you have used once and is still clean enough to use for most domestic requirements, except obviously for drinking. So water that you have caught in the shower, water that you have managed to save from anything really… is good enough and wet enough(!) to use again.

This workshop made our water saving efforts appear to be just the first step in a project that could become way more intense than I ever expected. I would never have considered creating ponds in our garden as a means to store water before. I learnt how to create a well… something I never thought I needed to know… but on second thoughts, this could become something I really need to know and sooner rather than later. Not that I am about to dig our own well, but a practical skill is never a wasted one… and I now understand the whole process.

And one really practical tip about storing water, and that is “What to do about the mosquito problem?” Simple answer… pop a gold fish in there and your mosquito problem is solved. I am quite prepared to give that a try!!!

We started off in the classroom… there is so much to see and look at here, you kind of feel a need to linger and explore…

Chatting about all things water-ish… with a collection of fab notes to work from…

And not a few distractions…

Followed by the prettiest snack time…

Our lesson was followed by a walkabout, just exploring and looking at water… how to spot it in the great outdoors and how to get it to where you need it…

The view is breathtaking…

And this lonely little kayak on the bottom of what should be a dam of water… is fairly alarming. We live in a winter rainfall area and there just hasn’t been enough water. Not even a drop of water in the dam… and we are past the middle of winter.

After all that learning we were welcomed to an amazing feast, infused with fynbos and wonderfully foraged food… salads like never before and sausages sizzling over the fire…

Fresh, home grown ingredients… and so much hard work creating a beautiful day out…

Everything to love…

And the perfect mini-holiday for myself!!!

If you are keen to dig deeper into your gardening adventure…. then these workshops for you. If you are looking to escape from your hum drum reality for a day and head out on an foraging adventure, followed by a feast then head straight for The Veld and Sea Website and look around, there is definitely something there for everyone to enjoy!!!

Thank you so much to The Veld and Sea Team for gifting me with the fantastic workshop. This is not a sponsored post and opinions expressed are as usual, entirely my own.