RESIDENTS are being urged to sharpen their pruning shears and pick up some advice on how to grow their own fruit trees this Saturday.
The Friends of the Werribee Park Heritage Orchard and Parks Victoria will hold a grafting day to provide green thumbs with the information needed to start one in their own backyard.
Parks Victoria's Adam Smith said the event would include demonstrations of grafting fruit trees and how to store grafted tree stock. Members from the Heritage Fruits Society will sell fruit trees and there will also be tours of the orchard.
As reported in the Banner in May, a group of people have joined forces to re-establish the orchard, which is tucked away in a small corner near the Werribee Mansion.
Project manager Simon Branson said the orchard dated back to the Chirnside family in the late 19th century, and reached its peak in the 1930s, when the mansion was still a seminary.
The Friends of the Werribee Park Heritage Orchard group was established to work with Parks Victoria to preserve the orchard's existing trees and bring it back to life through propagation of original stock and the addition of species which complement its history.
"We want this to be a community resource where people can come to learn the basics of things like fruit trees pruning and take those ideas and put them into practice at home.
"The aim is to develop sustainability practices, permaculture, beehives and even heirloom vegetables."
The grafting day is from 10am-2pm at the farm building, Werribee Park, K Road, Werribee South.
Details: 131963.
