Aberdeenshire Wellbeing Festival is an annual event which seeks to bring together community activity and events that promote and support mental health and wellbeing. In it's seventh year, 2022's festival theme is reducing loneliness, and hosted an event and workshop that explored how plants support each other in their growth through companion planting. We were joined by our gardener Lindy Young, who shared her seeds of knowledge!

First, we held our monthly Reading Together in Square Deal, which was then followed by a hands on workshop in the Brander Garden! For our Reading Together, we were reading a chapter of Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer called The Three Sisters, which explores the indigenous agricultural technique of planting beans, corn and squash in the same patch of soil - in doing so, the plants support each other to promote better growth and yield through nutrients exchange, shade and structural support. After chatting about the text and eating lunch (made with ingredients from our own garden), we headed outside to have a hands on go at planting our own 'three sisters' with beans, corn and courgettes / sunflowers, nasturtium and sweetpeas / or any other combination we have available!Have a browse through our Garden Library at Square Deal or take a look at our Directory here.