Saturday 7 | Sunday 8 | Monday 9 November 2020
Nurseries
Spring Open Garden at Sophie’s Patch will be held on Saturday 7th, Sunday 8th and Monday 9th November from 10am to 4pm.
Tickets are $15 over 13 years, $5 aged 5-12 years and Free under 5. For COVID tracing Every person needs to have a ticket including babies.
The open garden will run as always over the three days. You will be delighted to know that the societies will be here (Beekeepers’ Society of SA, Birds SA and Butterfly Conservation SA) the nurseries will be here (Hillside Herbs and Succulents, Tupelo Grove Nursery and Bickleigh Vale Organic Farm) and so will Recreate from Mt Pleasant. We’ll have Nature Craft kids activities on Saturday and Sunday including making nature crowns and making botanical prints using foliage and flowers.
COVID changes
To work in with COVID guidelines we must take prepaid bookings in advance to manage numbers and you will also be able to prepay your choice of food if you want to sample home grown produce from the vegie garden and orchard at Sophie’s Patch.
Delicious Food
Our wonderful chef Heather Hristovski, who usually does our cooking demos at open gardens, has been hard at work designing a savoury tasting box, and together with her international cookery students she will be pre making them. These are the students who I was supporting with excess produce during the initial months of COVID and you can read more about them in these posts. https://www.facebook.com/sophiethomsonpublicfigure/posts/2625205491068296 & https://www.facebook.com/qthc.edu.au/posts/2661628090631687. She will be using my home-grown vegies, herbs, and eggs. Here is a sample photo and reading her menu below my mouth is watering. Gluten free options are delicious too. $17 Serves 1.
Lunch Box Menu
Roasted and Spiced Beetroot Hummus Dip with Herbed Natural Yoghurt Chapati
Tortilla Espanola with Sophie’s Patch Seasonal Vegetables
Ancient Grain Roasted Pumpkin Arancini
These tasting boxes will need to be ordered in advance as we are unlikely to have any spares on the day.
Sweets – Cake Tasting Boxes
There will also be a sweet tasting box featuring three of our famous yummy Sophie’s Patch Cakes, which will be our famous pumpkin cake, golden tomatillo and chocolate beetroot cake, subject to availability.
Again, we request that you order your sweet treats with your ticket so that you are not disappointed on the day you visit. Gluten free options will be available too. $10 1 to 2 serves.
Exclusive Talks
The main difference is that due to social distancing we won’t be able to host the wonderful program of garden talks which we hold in the shed. However, we have come up with what we believe will be an innovative and acceptable solution. We have asked all those who would usually deliver these talks to record a video for us and we will make them available to attendees to watch in the comfort of their own homes at a time that’s convenient to them. This will be only for Open Garden attendees for one month and then we make them available for everyone.
Otherwise we are working to make it as fun as usual, as I will once again love sharing my garden with wonderful like-minded people whilst adapting to our new normal.
The nurseries present will be offering many of the interesting and unusual plants that I grow.
Supporting organisations
Organisations at the open garden may include:
Kids Activities
Saturday 7th – Nature Craft – making nature crowns. Kate Hubmayer, Author ‘Nature Craft for Aussie Kids’ – making
Sunday 8th – Making botanical prints using foliage and flowers. Faye Goodrick, Recreate, Mt Pleasant
Garden Art
We will have a range of our own creations such as butterflies, bees and dragon flies and the new ladybirds which featured in Balance at the Royal Show. We will also have a limited number of our large red metal poppies.
Recreate – Run by the Mt Pleasant Natural Resource Centre, they are a regular feature at our Open Gardens and we are delighted to have them back. They create the most amazing things for the home and garden including incredible garden art, all from recycled materials.
No dogs…
Sherlock
Sherlock is our wonderful guard dog, flock protector, friend and family pet. He is a breed called a Mareema, bred to protect stock from predators and to be intensely loyal to, and protective of, his family.
Sherlock is true to his breeding and we ask that visitors do not bring other dogs to our property. Visiting dogs will unnecessarily cause Sherlock stress as he feels the need to protect his flock and family from them.
Your support is much appreciated.
Partnering with local charities
Sophie partners with local community groups and charities to organise the parking. In the past few years, Local Rotary Clubs have managed visitor parking to raise money for their chosen charities including “Operation Flinders’.
What happened in previous open gardens?
Open gardens at Sophie’s Patch are more than just demonstrating sustainable gardening practices that I am always preaching, they are more like a fair or community event focused on community education. Every open garden is different at Sophie’s Patch as the garden grows, different speakers and groups join, amazing sculptures are built and the garden evolves.
