Local workshops will help you to learn more about gardening

The worskhops, which are being held at Antrim’s stunning Castle Gardens, kick off with Your Garden – Reborn on Saturday, May 11 from 10am to 4pm.

Do you have a patch of garden, maybe an entire garden, that just doesn’t look right, but you don’t know where to start improving it?

Bruce Batten will help you see that what you need, first and foremost, is to understand the basic principles of garden design.

In this half-day seminar, Bruce Batten will introduce you to all the important points you need to consider when turning an outdoor space into a place of pleasure and appropriate choices of hard surfaces, planting, colour harmony and contrast, screening, utility areas and levels of maintenance.

You will learn to appreciate how important it is to get everything in balance and proportion, and to adopt the right overall style for your property – formal, informal, exotic, new wave or traditional.

The workshop costs £17.50 (includes refreshments).

For amateur gardeners, An Introductory Guide To Basic Gardening with Slemish Garden Centre’s Frank McCooke on Thursday, May 16 from 10am to 1pm, will prove useful.

The workshop, which costs £15 (includes refreshments) is for first time gardeners or those who would like to learn a little more and become more active in their own garden and extend their living area outside.

Award-winning gardener Frank will talk through very simple gardening plans that are low maintenance and easy to achieve but very effective.

He will also discuss what ornamental plants, shrubs, evergreens, trees will grow in your gardens, show how to test soil types, identify problems, and work within bylaws and legislation.

Frank returns on Thursday, May 23 from 10am to 1pm for a workshop on vegetable gardening.

Straight Forward, Down To Earth Organic Vegetable Gardening, which costs £12, is a light-hearted talk covering site preparation, soil and composts, seed selection, crop rotation, container growing, raised bed building and garden planning by award winning gardener Frank McCooke.

Take the opportunity, whether you are a novice or competent gardener, to come along and learn how to grow fruit, vegetables and herbs.

To book your place on any of these course, contact Antrim Castle Gardens on 028 9448 1338 or email [email protected]