Costa Georgiadis spreading Peace in the Tamar Region in August
Story by Jo Dean, CGA’s Tasmanian Rep., August 2018
As part of the Tamar Valley Peace Festival, ABC Gardening Australia’s Costa Georgiadis visited a number of gardens around Launceston sharing his passion and wisdom for the role gardens play in creating a peaceful world.
As keen gardeners, we know just being in the garden creates a peaceful persona, and to pick nutritious food a few steps from the house always brings joy. Costa shared this with West Launceston Primary School students, picking fresh herbs and sampling olives picked and preserved from the tree in the school garden. Together Costa and the students made herb and olive pizza which was shared for recess.
At Ravenswood Neighbourhood House, visitors enjoyed a presentation followed by Q and A session, and a wander in Pioneer Parade Community garden. Costa focused on community action by ‘understanding with the mind, connecting with the heart and acting with the hands’, the absolute heart of any act of peace.
Following up since his visit the community have begun a bag sewing project to replace single use plastic and are gathering together infrastructure to expand the composting system and nurture the soil.
Launceston College was rumbling discussing “Feeding a growing world population with sustainable practices and ethics”. The discussion explored ways to grow nutritious food in an urban environment and highlighted some of the challenges faced by communities around the globe.
SRC students walked the Sky Garden with Costa who shared encouraging words of wisdom with students about the hanging herb garden which is comprised of culinary herbs used in a range of multi-cultural dishes in Food Technology at the school.
The final visit for the day to Northern Suburbs Community Centre focused on the many aspects of composting, a general Q and A session with a packed room of participants. The group sauntered out to the garden and looked at simple to make worm farms and pallet bay compost systems.
The daylight disappeared before the discussions were complete, with many inspired green waste enthusiasts hitting the road full of ideas and knowledge to create and maintain their own backyard heaps.
It was a privilege to see so many wonderful gardens in the City of Launceston area and meet keen gardeners everywhere we went. Costa is a fabulous ambassador for Australian City Farms Community Garden Network, generously sharing his knowledge and passion for all things gardening and sustainable living.
Many thanks to all present for coming together at the Tamar Peace Festival events and celebrating Peace through a gamut of peace-filled creative gardening activities.
