Saturday 28 March / 1pm – 5pm / Open Eye Gallery
Join us for a day of talks and activities celebrating gardens, growing and nature! We’ll be discussing right to grow, composting food waste, inclusive gardening, seed saving and queer ecology. There will be stalls and talks (please book your free talk ticket).
Stalls / 1pm – 4pm / drop in, no need to book
Compost Works: Composting in small spaces
Using a demonstration wormery composter, they will be show that you don’t need a lot of outdoor space to be able to compost your food waste. You will look into the wormer and see how it works in turning your food waste into compost that you can then use for your outdoor and indoor plants. You will also be able to discuss the basics of composting and how to look after the worms to make sure they thrive. Books and other information about composting in general will be available, including other types of compost systems. This is a family-friendly activity, as you can dig into the wormery to explore the worms (gloves will be provided).
Dr Barry Green: Right to Grow campaign
Dr Barry Green a GP, community garden manager, forager and trustee of the Liverpool Food Growers Network. Right to Grow is a campaign championed by Incredible Edible nationally, and locally through the LFGN. The campaign focuses on communities looking after their own green spaces to grow food and habitat for biodiversity, improving green infrastructure, reducing food miles and building a new, healthy food economy.
Squash Liverpool: Seed saving and growing from and for local seeds
A stall with information from the Squash garden, shop and café and a demonstration on seed saving in relation to growing locally adapted plants for and from locally saved seeds of the Toxteth Seed Library, and how learning theses skills is a radical act against climate change and the commercial seed industry.
Growing Sudley: Therapeutic Horticulture group
Therapeutic Horticulture group for adults with stroke and brain injury we’ll display information about adaptive and inclusive gardening for disabilities and health conditions.
Andrea Ku: Pennywort Patrol
This stall is centred on the community canoe group who litter pick the Leeds–Liverpool Canal and remove invasive non-native floating pennywort. This plant forms dense mats that choke waterways, block light, reduce oxygen and smother habitat. It’s a classic “bad news” climate-and-disturbance story – until you lift it out of the water and change what happens next. The group reframes pennywort as a problem-to-resource case study: they collect around 10kg each month, then compost it responsibly (sealed transport, no fragment escape) by balancing it with dry “browns” such as cardboard, straw or woodchip. Because pennywort is soft, leafy and nitrogen-rich, it breaks down quickly into dark, crumbly compost. That compost is then used on the raised beds throughout the year – spring top-dressing, summer mulching to hold moisture during heatwaves, autumn soil rebuilding, and winter protection to feed the soil-helping community food growing become more resilient to hotter, drier summers and wetter winters.
The message is simple and hopeful: even things with difficult origins can be turned into something that supports climate-ready food growing and biodiversity.
Jay Hampton: Seed library and art activity
Jay Hampton runs a seed library that gives free seeds to local growers, teaching seed saving and running botanical art workshops. Seed library is focusing on heritage seeds which carry their own stories, cultural practices and adapt to local growing conditions – making them more resilient to climate change. Currently Jay is tracking down lost seed varieties with links to the Liverpool City Region to set up a regional seed hub and get these varieties back into public hands.
Talks / 1.30pm – 4.15 / free, booking required
1.30pm – 2pm. Lotus Brook: Gardening for climate change, biodiversity and community power / RSVP
A talk about the power of collaboration between social enterprises to work with gardening volunteers to change street corners from grey to green; how this raises civic pride and increased urban biodiversity, helping to reduce urban heat and slowing the flow of water.
2.15pm – 2.45pm. Andrea Ku: Pennywort Case Study / RSVP
Pennywort Patrol is a community canoe group who litter pick the Leeds–Liverpool Canal and remove invasive non-native floating pennywort. This plant forms dense mats that choke waterways, block light, reduce oxygen and smother habitat. The group reframes pennywort as a problem-to-resource case study: they collect around 10kg each month, then compost it responsibly. That compost is then used on the raised beds throughout the year – spring top-dressing, summer mulching to hold moisture during heatwaves, autumn soil rebuilding, and winter protection to feed the soil-helping community food growing become more resilient to hotter, drier summers and wetter winters. The message is simple and hopeful: even things with difficult origins can be turned into something that supports climate-ready food growing and biodiversity.
3pm – 3.30pm. Earth Moves: Inclusion Through Participation on the Land / RSVP
This activity reflects on work through hands-on land-based activities to foster inclusion, dialogue, and shared decision-making in environmental projects. At Earth Moves, participants from a wide range of backgrounds come together to work on the land – gardening, land care, creative making, and site development and media projects – designed so that every voice matters, regardless of experience, education, confidence, or social position.
The environmental sector is often dominated by a single demographic, which can unintentionally create barriers to participation and silence other perspectives. This participatory talk directly addresses that imbalance by describing how to create welcoming, non-hierarchical spaces where people who are often excluded from environmental conversations — working-class communities, disabled people, neurodivergent people, LGBTQ+ communities, and those without formal environmental training — are not only invited in, but actively centred.
Through shared tasks on the land, conversations emerge naturally. People talk while they work, reflect together, and are supported to express opinions about environmental issues, land use, climate action, and community needs. We think it is important that discussion is not dominated by confident or professional voices. Decisions about the site and activities are shaped by those present, reinforcing a sense of ownership and agency.
Working with land breaks down social barriers, builds trust, and enables genuine discussion in ways that formal meetings often cannot. This activity strengthens environmental engagement by recognising that everyone has knowledge, lived experience, and insight, and that environmental action is more effective when shaped by diverse voices. The outcome is not only improved well-being and connection to land, but a more democratic, representative, and socially just approach to environmental participation.
For this talk, Earth Moves will show clips of their environmental films and lead a participatory discussion on unconscious bias, corporate influence and what people nowadays perceive environmentalism to be.
3.45pm – 4.15pm. Mersey Wilders (Tom Moulsdale & Sam Keall): Queer Ecology for Gardeners: Mimicking Ecosystem Processes / RSVP
A talk exploring the use of queer ecology/theory to understand the ecological processes of our planet, how we are part of them as gardeners and communities and individuals can work with them to remediate, grow more food and wildlife and reconnect wild spaces. The aim is to help people in their journey to grow more gardens with ecosystems as their allies rather than their enemies or something ‘other’ (as is emphasised in most gardening practices).
Garden festival is part of LOOK Climate Lab.