A one-day planning workshop was held at The Woolshed on 12 March 2016 to plan the first stages of setting up the Pukerua Bay Community Food Forest. Attendance was thinner than previous meetings, nevertheless we made a great deal of collective decisions and progress, and this was summarised into our document, Plan for Autumn-Winter 2016 (PDF). See also the Planting Guide (PDF) produced as the result of earlier research work and meetings.
Muri Reserve community food forest site
Many thanks to go to Richard Self for ably leading our workshop process, and for sharing his experiences with the Wellington Innermost Gardens community garden!
The Pukerua Bay Residents’ Association is conducting some community consultation about how Muri Reserve can be developed, and have published an online survey for residents to complete. If you have ideas about the community garden food forest, please complete the survey before the end of October, and let the Residents’ Association know your views!
Amongst the group here we have: gardening, beekeeping, manual labour, web and graphic design, signwriting, building, and a structural engineer, and probably all sorts of other skills I’m not aware of…!
Actions
There is a “field trip” this Sunday 11 May for anyone keen – we’re going to look at Pauline’s excellent garden at 10am and then go and have a look at the proposed site in Muri Reserve (see map). I’m hoping we can get Richard and/or Tim from Innermost Gardens (Majoribanks Street, Wellington) to come along and help us with ideas.
It’s great to have the RA behind the garden scheme, and it’s part of the village plan. Iain is going to follow up with getting the required official permission from Porirua City Council. This will probably involve some paperwork – some of which will come under the RA banner.
Iain is also going to set up the gardens email list – more about that soon.
Create an A4 poster for the dairy & school notice boards, school shade house, and something to go in the school newsletter.
If we wanted to we could set about getting the long grass on the site under control with a team of mowers and weed-trimmers at any time, without the council’s permission.
Also worth noting there is a Residents Association meeting on Tuesday 13 May for those interested.
Hi folks, our first planning meeting will be on Thursday 1 May 2014 at 7pm (ical) at St Mark’s, 98 Rawhiti Road, Pukerua Bay (map). Please spread the word so we get lots of ideas, involvement and enthusiasm 🙂
Martin Crawford of the Agroforestry Research Centre in Devon UK, shows us around his forest garden project, and explains some of the science and practical principles behind it:
And in New Zealand, Robert and Robyn Guyton show us around their two acre food forest in Riverton, Southland:
