Wildsight Kimberley/Cranbrook is honoured to welcome permaculture specialist Javan K. Bernakevitch to Kimberley as host of the workshop Hugelkultur Unearthed.

The workshop runs on Friday, April 21, from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m., starting with theory at the Kimberley Aquatic Centre and finishing the afternoon with hands on construction in the Open Gate Garden (just behind the Aquatic Centre). Registration is available online.

Javan is a land designer, consultant, writer, educator and speaker who created and manages Permaculture BC, a growing hub of permaculture education, practitioners and projects in similar bioregions. In relation to hugelkultur, Javan studied with Sepp Holzer, an Austrian permaculture expert noted for further developing this method of growing that is hundreds of years old.

Hügelkultur, pronounced hoo-gul-culture, is a no-dig raised bed replicating the process of decomposition that occurs on the forest floor. The word is German, meaning mound culture or hill culture, and that is what the end result looks like, a mound.

A Hugelkultur bed (pictured above) is an incredibly productive garden bed that is designed to act as a windbreak, sound berm and dynamic growing system for your annual and perennial veggies and shrubs. As an ideal application for a dry temperate climate, this type of planting system collects excess moisture from rain and snowmelt throughout the cool season and stores that moisture for use during the dry months when plants need it most. Another great benefit is the dynamic nature, as the beds are always slowly breaking down and generating heat, which helps plants grow faster through the process of decomposition and nutrient release.

Javan is a wealth of knowledge and has a fun upbeat teaching style that is bound to leave people grinning from ear to ear. This one day hands-on workshop will pass along the skills needed to construct a dry land hugelkultur bed that can be used to grow all kinds of crops including trees and berry bushes.

Wildsight Kimberley/Cranbrook

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