Community Garden

Community Food Forest planning workshop

/ / Community Garden, Consultation

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
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!

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Minutes from the garden planning meeting

/ / Community Garden, Minutes

Thanks to those who attended the meeting last Thursday! I’m sorry I’ve left it so late but here are the minutes from the meeting.

There was a lot of lively discussion, and some of the ideas and suggestions follow:

  • A Pukerua Bay garden tour fundraiser event
  • Learn from the Island Bay Community Garden – watch the NZ documentary, Gardening With Soul (see below for the trailer)
  • Allotments produce vegetables quickly, while the food-forest take a few years to establish.
  • Allotments also provide social opportunities
  • All sorts of opportunities to involve the school
  • Start the orchard trees off in the school shade-house and get the kids involved early
  • A school trip to learn from Raumati School’s garden project
  • Use produce from the food forest in school lunches
  • Beehives
  • Heritage varieties – educational opportunities
  • Growing mushrooms in sawdust, logs, compost
  • Erosion and sediment control plan, if we do any earthworks (e.g. building swales)
  • Use the PKB Traders Facebook page

Expertise

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

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. Iain is also going to set up the gardens email list – more about that soon.
  4. Create an A4 poster for the dairy & school notice boards, school shade house, and something to go in the school newsletter.
  5. 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.
  6. Also worth noting there is a Residents Association meeting on Tuesday 13 May for those interested.

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