STARTING A COMMUNITY GARDEN

How Grow Wānaka Began

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Not long after lockdown a message was posted on Upper Clutha Community Notices Facebook page asking if anyone was interested in a community garden. There was a great response, a lot of enthusiasm and energy was generated and some wonderful community connections were made.

When we first met we shared ideas, our thoughts around what a community garden in Wanaka could look like, how it could work and where would we put it. There were many shared themes as to what the garden would be such as, a space for the community to come together to learn, educate, grow food together and give back to the community. Food security and keeping food scraps out of landfill were also common themes amongst the group.

Luckily within this initial group there was a good spread of enthusiasm, gardening knowledge & skill plus some with admin experience and Georgia, who had spent her summer trialing a commercial food scrap collection service. She was now seeking a more permanent location for this to extend beyond the trial phase and a community garden seemed just right.

The journey to a community garden is often long with many challenges and early advice was that these groups often fail not for a lack of enthusiasm or skill but the unknowns such as access to land, group dynamics, funding, time & energy. In other words we had a long road ahead.

Where to establish this community garden was of course one of our first major hurdles. Location, accessibility, size and any restrictions on use were all under consideration and it seemed as though our options were slim. However once the word was out we were incredibly fortunate to be gifted a piece of land at the Outlet Camp ground location.

We are a full year into this project now and the motivation is as strong as ever to get this garden growing. So many successes to celebrate during the past 12 months and many faces coming and going as time and energy allows.

Generous donations from our community to the garden over the past 12 months have been invaluable and we would not be at this point in our journey without them. A huge thankyou to all our volunteers and supporters. You can checkout our partners and sponsors page for more information, you might find a great local business to support.