Understanding the Weather with Jeremy Prentice of Very Edible Gardens

Does Melbourne actually have terrible weather, and why you can experience a hailstorm on a 40° day? Do trees make rain, and what do Solstice and Equinox really mean? Can you learn to tell if it’s going to rain just by looking at the clouds?

For those curious about the big climate drivers like El Niño and La Niña, East Brunswick Village (EBV) is hosting an event titled “A Taster – Understanding the weather” with Jeremy Prentice of Very Edible Gardens (VEG). The session will be a lightning tour of all things meteorological along with the what’s and how’s of the new EBV Weather Station.

“As gardeners and humans our experience of weather is very much affected by our understanding of the patterns behind the daily details,” says Jeremy. The evening will touch on the principles underpinning all the climate and weather, and review some of the data gathered by new EBV weather station.

The EBV weather station offers residents a doorway to deepening their weather experience and knowledge – from aspects such as how much rainfall have the rooftop veggie beds actually had (and should I water them still?) to those as simple as when might suit for a rooftop picnic. For VEG, having site-specific weather data to align with the ongoing experience of maintaining the rooftop and streetscape vegetation of EBV will more deeply inform the future horticultural practices, onsite and beyond.

Currently heading up the VEG management team, Jeremy spends his time teaching, gardening, and watching the clouds sail by. With over 20 years of horticultural experience, including seven years at Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens, Jeremy has been teaching and sharing knowledge for many years. It’s Jeremy’s desire to embed scientific understanding into our daily lived experience, providing a rich foundation for the course work.

“While likely not the first time a weather station has been placed on a residential body corporate rooftop, I don’t think that data has been made freely available for residents, either static or as a live stream like EBV will have,” says Jeremy. “The coupling of the weather data with the horticultural experience of maintaining the site is also very different to how most gardens in body corporate developments are managed.”

Very Edible Gardens has designed and will maintain the green spaces at EBV, and residents have a dedicated veggie bed and food growing space on the same rooftop as the weather station – the local site data will be beneficial to the growing experience for both residents and the VEG team.

This type of information has previously been anecdotal, however the weather station this data will vastly improve understanding the rooftop growing conditions, also providing an educational component to those residents utilising the community vegetables gardens.

“As far as we know, weather data aligned with the growing experience has not been explored before in this setting, and the EBV gardens have always been designed to so much more than simply ‘green furniture.”

A Taster – Understanding the weather
FREE 
Wednesday March 18
6.30-7.30pm
EBV Display Suite, 143 Nicholson Street, Brunswick East
Bookings: eventbrite.com/a-taster-understanding-weather-tickets