Oruawharo Community Garden Coordinator

I’ve always loved browsing nature when I was a kid, dunes, parks, ponds and gardens. making flower posies and perfume, weaving sticks and bark, pressing leaves and flowers, drawing and painting flowers, animals and mushrooms. Nature and creating are in the same basket for me.

I grew up in Holland and we had a very small backyard but always filled with plants, pond, fish, frogs, tiny garden shed for wood that was my pretend stable with my pretend horses and pretend sowing machine made of a interesting log threaded with sowing thread.

My dad always made sure there were flowers growing for my mum and us and just a general feel good space for outdoor relaxing. My granddad also had a small garden with aviary. It was filled with flowers, gooseberries, rosehips for his rosellas and birdsong. Here, I would take all my grandmas recycling into the garden to whip up perfumes and potions in yoghurt pots discovering many plants textures, smells, transformations through the seasons.

The old lady that lived opposite our home was like a grandmother to me and she was the keenest gardener in the street, her backyard existed of a very small paved area to have her morning cuppa, four square meters of lawn and the rest entirely filled with red currants, she had a compost bin and has been the only person I’ve ever known in my home country to have one at home, magical and fascinating thing in the darkest but always very well kept corner of her yard. Here I discovered another mind-blowing transformation of yucky stuff to earthy forest smelling goodness filled with wiggly worms ( some days I still wonder how her bin was always balanced so well, the only answer I can find till date is she must have had a super simple and healthy diet). The creation of something new out of seemingly useless stuff has always been a central point in my life. As a teenager I wanted to go to the green school but was denied access to this school as it was below my “level” of what I was capable of. So went to the school at my level receiving “boring” education learning boring stuff and hated school ever since, with the exception of art classes and biology to some extent.

It wasn’t until I met Shane and tagging along with his mum to Caity Endts horticulture classes that my “happy garden feeling” got rekindled and when we moved into the house in Medlands a year later we started digging beds to create our own gardens. I was very new to growing stuff and had no understanding of the underground world and plants’ peculiar preferences. I’ve been trying for 15 years now, learning and grown a thing or two, I continue discovering new things every day.

The islands beauty inspired me to get creative again and I stared my own little business making soap and lotions and potions, for real this time with ingredients that actually smelled a lot better and far safer than my childhood experiments. After the kids got a bit older, I really needed a change and was craving more outdoors time as every time I worked with these beautiful ingredients I was just stuck inside mixing them up, very far removed from my sunny childhood blends. Finally, I decided to put more time into growing our own as the need for local food was increasing due to freight prices, covid related uncertainties and the simple realization I was mainly working to earn money to buy food. To skip those steps and growing food while Shane was still having an income seemed the right thing to do. I did a permaculture course and I was hooked. It became apparent I needed more connection with the community if I wanted to grow. I started helping at the Medlands community garden to learn more and get to know more people that love growing. It was great to be able to contribute my help and feel more confident harvesting from a garden, others had grown. It was a great opportunity to access herbs and vege that seem to be hard to grow at home.

How I ended up working at Oruawharo community garden:

I helped out most Fridays during volunteer mornings and really got super inspired and excited when Peter Speck did a workshop on large compost pile building. His stories inspired me as I was not just about brown and green and ph and sciency stuff, but much deeper meaning and along with some basic Biodynamic teachings I had another Aha moment confirming gardening is what I want to do.

Sue and Emmy who started the garden and worked it for ten years with help from Peter Speck were going to retire from the community garden as they felt after 10 years they liked to pass on the stick. When we gathered with other volunteers to talk about who would be keen to take over, I was the only one putting my hand up, and so the process started of Sue training me up to take over responsibility. At the same time Auckland council and the local board plan emphasized the need for food resilience on the island and two jobs were created, one as food resilience coordinator and one as Community garden coordinator. I started my first contract under the food resilience project as the community garden coordinator during one of the long covid lockdowns as it was an essential job, very much in that moment and going into the future. My contactless contract was left in the community pantry for me to sign and picked up again. I felt very blessed and deep inside knowing what’s important in life and knowing I was on the right track in life. It was a very good feeling to be able to work in the garden during these uncertain times. The food resilience project was then supported under Aotea Ora trust and has now recently been transferred to Anamata. It took me a while to get the hang of it as gardening at home is different from a public place and organizing workshops and people was not my strongest skill and I definitely did not feel like the worlds best gardener. However it is very humbling to be able to learn together with the weekly volunteers, working with Caity Endt during workshops and slowly seeing the garden grow in fertility and productive outcome.

Why I think gardens are important:

I think gardens are important as they offer a small sanctuary of wonder and play for all ages. A place on your doorstep that you see everyday in every light, every season through the years you get to know your immediate surroundings at a deep level and I believe learn more about the way of nature and lifes patterns focusing on a small manageable area that you can manipulate (or not) to your own liking to reflect your personality or needs. I feel every home needs a green space to stay connected to our source. Growing your own food in your garden is very satisfying and gives great appreciation to the luxury of having food at all and not waste any, the flavours are so much better an I’m not a scientist but they recon its more nutritious especially straight from the garden onto the plate. I believe it no doubt and don’t need to research and justify these statements as I know this is true, I think we all know. Kids eat almost anything that comes from the garden without complaining, in fact they want to see what there is so they can make their own meal. They learn to appreciate biodiversity. It can be native, flowers, food, manicured hedges, lawns or all of it together. We learn that diversity in the garden makes a healthy place, interesting place just like it does on a larger scale out there in the wider environment. I will never trust any environmental expert that does not have a garden. 

Why I think community gardens are important:

I think community gardens are important as it gives a opportunity to inspire others to grow food in gardens and see how satisfying it is to have some healthy homegrown produce on a daily bases. It’s a place to connect with others, share ideas, seeds and cuttings, recipes and friendships. It shows that gardening is really for people of all walks of life. Young, old, man, women, inspired. And recovering or healing people too. It is a great place to come to if your own place is unfit for growing or if it takes too much manipulation and is better left in its natural state. The garden here at Oruawharo also makes a central point for people to drop off their unwanted kitchen waste that we use to make compost, this reduces resources going to landfill. It is an amazing place for the kids to browse and connect with vege growing, although some plants occasionally don’t survive the kids enthusiasm I keep reminding myself that’s part of this space, to learn and grow. I love the openness of the garden, people going for a late summer stroll or just popping in to see what’s happening when visiting the Opp shop or church. It is really more than just growing food, its connection you don’t get in full nature let’s say the forest or beach or the opposite like in the city where its all humans and consumption, it’s the magical part in between where people meet nature and we work for each other. There are as many people visiting the garden to harvest some herbs or vege as there are to just get inspired and wander observing the never ending change or simply sit and watch the butterflies, birds and kids.