Enjoy Plantings, Eat Bugs and Learn at the Australian Garden Show

If you're going to be around Sydney this September, be sure to add the Australian Garden Show Sydney to your list of must-sees. This garden-food-lifestyle celebration will play host to numerous Australian celebrity garden experts, chefs, entomologists — and, of course, the public, who will get to indulge all the senses at this inaugural event.

Info: September 5 to 8, 2013. Centennial Park, Sydney, Australia. Tickets are $35 to $45 through Ticketek.

A sweeping tree-lined avenue will connect 16 display gardens, including September Sky, which will be unveiled by gardeners Tom Harfleet and Andrew Fisher Tomlin. It will serve as the show's centerpiece garden.

To commemorate Gallipoli’s centenary in 2015 (a commemoration of the bitter eight-month campaign that helped forge Australia as a young nation), award-winning landscape designer Jim Fogarty will present The Last to Leave, a Gallipoli-inspired garden.


Other garden creations will include the work of event curator Myles Baldwin; Brendan Moar, from the LifeStyle channel’s Dry Spell Gardening and the History channel's upcoming Coast Australia; and Charlie Albone, from the LifeStyle channel’s Selling Houses Australia.





More than 100 exhibitors will include nursery and garden associations, and there will be a vast variety of gardening produce and information stalls. An interactive kids' section, operated by Twigz, promises to keep the little ones entertained.


You can catch talks from international vertical garden guru Patrick Blanc (shown), Aussie garden legends Angus Stewart and Graham Ross, and the "Gourmet Farmer," Matthew Evans.

The interactive and informative talks are included in the price of a daily entrance ticket and run for an hour, including a 15-minute Q&A. These sessions allow the public to connect with some of the world’s leading gardening, lifestyle and culinary experts in a broad program covering everything from advanced gardening to unusual culinary demonstrations.

Photo courtesy of Pascal Héni


Celebrity chef Kylie Kwong and entomologist Skye Blackburn will even create a selection of recipes featuring edible insects, including crickets and dehydrated earthworms, during their talk, as part of the event's "Seeds of Wisdom" lecture series.


By night the gardens will take on a whole new form as light installations created by architect and House Rules judge Joe Snell illuminate the displays. Majestic lighting will flood the grounds with effects designed by Anthony Bastic, event director at the Australian Garden Show Sydney and director of a light festival called Vivid.


World-class garden displays, a vibrant floral pavilion, various bars, ample places in which to indulge in fine cuisine and stunning visual installations will span 7 acres in Sydney's Centennial Park for the four-day event.


Visitors will discover new gardening experiences at Australian author and TV personality Indira Naidoo’s Kitchen Garden. They'll be able to build their own strawberry walls or water plants with pedal-powered sprinklers. Guests will also be encouraged to wander through tomato archways and learn how to use even the smallest spaces for pop-up edible gardens.

More: Living Sculptures Delight at the Montreal Botanical Garden

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