Thursday 31st August 2023
FLAG and GCP hosted an immersive experience for community members and the team of design students from SLATE Studios at UTS (who designed the Green Plot site). The group were joined by Darren Martin from Community Greening who ran a workshop on how to build a wicking bed.
A wicking bed is a self-watering system for your plants. There is a reservoir of water in some form of container which waters plants from below over a period of time, rather than from above. Plants draw water up by capillary action.
Our top tips we took away from Darren’s workshop:
- To build a wicking bed you need a water proof base or container
- An important feature of a wicking bed is an overflow point, this stops the bed from flooding the plants!
- You need to choose a suitable wicking material. We used perlite but you could also use something like sand.
- You could even build a wicking bed in a small space on a balcony – just make sure you consider the weight of the materials you use and that it complies with building regulations!
Check out some action shots from our workshop! Everyone certainly got involved and got their hands dirty!
For more information about wicking beds visit: https://www.botanicgardens.org.au/discover-and-learn/gardening-home/gardening-tips/building-wicking-bed
