The secrets to a green thumb can be found at the Alès Graft Exchange

Le greffon est un processus « chirurgical » permettant de multiplier les variations de fruits. Midi Libre – ALEXIS BETHUNE

For its fourteenth edition, the graft exchange offers arboriculture workshops and demonstrations, but also exchanges of seeds and objects. It will take place this Saturday, February 25, from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. in the Bosquet gardens. 

For more than ten years, uniting tree species has also brought together those curious about arboriculture. This Saturday, February 25, for its 14th edition, the renowned Alès Graft Exchange returns to settle in for a day in the Bosquet public garden. At the foot of Fort Vauban, until 5:30 p.m., around ten stands, run by associations, will meet to offer various workshops and offer advice to participants, who number in the hundreds.

"Each year, we have an average of 500 people at the event", specifies Sabine Rosier, head of the National Pomology Center, which initiated the event.

Exchange and workshops

This stock exchange will open at 9:30 a.m. for the public. And the first (almost) obligatory stop is at reception, where a volunteer will collect and sort what everyone has brought. "Beyond the technical aspect of the plantation, the event is based on free trade and sharing. Everyone must bring a seed, a cutting or something else to exchange, but it can also be a book or magazine on gardening, a pot of jam, which will be redistributed."

Then, throughout the day, around ten various workshops will be offered by associations with different specialties. Le Filon Vert, for example, will inform interested parties about the work of a beekeeper and the phenomenon of Asian hornets. On the manual side, the traditional citrus pruning workshops, trunk whitewashing, an important technique for protecting trees from climatic variations, and grafting demonstrations, this intervention used to multiply the varieties of fruit trees, are obviously on the program.

These meet great success with each edition. Only the planting of trees will not be on the program this year, simply because the garden beds have already been sufficiently sown during the last editions.

A meeting that grows in scale

"Initially, we created this meeting to teach people the actions and techniques of tree maintenance. We realized that there was no real training around this practice. And the demand, ultimately, is very strong, rejoices Sabine Rosier. All types of public come to meet us, whether regulars or walkers, young people or older ones". It is all the more satisfying as the partnerships continue to accumulate around this meeting, even if the hard core remains.

"The place, in itself, is enough to attract people", underlines the head of the Pomology Center . Moreover, a visit to the Bosquet terraces will also be planned during the day.
 

Free and open access. From 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at the Jardins du Bosquet. More information on 04 66 56 50 24. I subscribe to read more