Overview: Wellington City Urban Farming.

From Living Architecture to Local Food Feasts. How are we growing our resilience?

KaiCycle urban farm in Newtown, Wellington.

I have spent the last few months doing a lot of listening and meeting with people working directly in the urban farming and food growing space in Te Whanganui a Tara Wellington City. Gathering evidence with the aim of discerning what kind of support is needed for the urban food movement, that I can give.

I have experience as a professional gardener and urban farmer. During lockdown my first response was to plant a winter garden. I certainly wasn’t the only one. All of a sudden Aotearoa’s nurseries and seed stores were backed up with orders. I believe we’re in the midst of a local food resurgence. It’s time for urban farming to really shine. Trowels and all!

What’s happening now (central city and suburbs):

• KaiCycle Urban Farm is going from strength to strength. The search is on for bigger sites for expansion. Their community compost work is making a huge difference, diverting food waste from landfill.
• Kōkihi is a small business growing local (central city and suburbs) produce, edible flowers and microgreens for much loved Wellington restaurants including Shepherd and The Botanist. They occasionally run workshops on foraging, mushroom cultivation, and fishing with invited tutors from throughout Aotearoa.
• Houghton Bay Farm supplies freshly grown kai to neighbours and Commonsense Organics. It’s proof that growing food is possible on a slope, in the wind, up 100 steps!
• Papa Taiao Earthcare is running a new Regenerative Urban Agriculture course for secondary school students. Both a year long course and short course run in partnership with KaiCycle and members of the NZ (Wellington) Urban Farmers’ Alliance.
• Nikau Cafe’s rooftop garden is still there and whilst it’s getting back to production after neglect during the lockdown, it’s still our best example of a rooftop food growing success story in our central city. NB it’s not open to the public. They also grow herbs in their courtyard for use in their dishes.
• Chews Lane Apartments has a group or residents working on setting up their first ever opt-in composting system with the help of KaiCycle. They have two rooftop spaces that are windy and under-utilised but full of potential for conversion into a garden with sheltered ‘rooms’. Currently in a co-design phase with the support of Wellington City Council.
• The Urban Farmers’ Alliance is a new initiative that has been set up to support and connect urban farmers across Aotearoa. Set up by For The Love of Bees in Auckland who are working on a whole series of Regenerate Now webinars, including ‘Farmers In The Field’ on Youtube and Instagram.
• The Edmund Hilary Fellowship and Pure Advantage’s Regenerative Agriculture webisode series is worth tuning into to hear from rural farmers transitioning to regenerative practices, and how this connects with the urban context. Wellington growers have been participating in the kōrero.
• GrowSpace Wellington have been running workshops on how to get growing at your place. They’re currently shifting into more of a strategic role, supporting local food initiatives.
• The Sustainability Trust are running two food related initiatives: Food Is Free and Fruit Tree Guardians. They have demonstration planter boxes onsite, run workshops, and have seeds, tools and mesh for rat-proofing your compost bin, and many more things for sale at their shop / venue on Forresters Lane, off Tory st.
• Toru Education is running a permaculture design course across the four seasons in 2021. Including sections with an urban food focus in Wellington city.
• The Sustainable Business Network is running an event: Creating A Food Secure Future For Wellington on Weds 16th Sept.
• Innermost Gardens community garden in Matairangi Mount Victoria is planting more intensive beds of vegetables and putting up signs to indicate when produce is ready to harvest. They’re also soon to be running workshops on backyard orchards, urban permaculture and mushroom production.
• Seeds To Feeds is a suburb based food growing and eating festival that happens in summer in Wellington. The pilot was just before lockdown. This coming summer is the next one so everyone’s just planning what to grow. It just goes to show how very current this all is.

What’s coming next:

Meeting more of the people behind these projects has been a real delight. We know this work is all aligned with our City’s Towards 2040 strategy and Resilence Strategy (see#6). Resilience and disaster preparedness is right at the fore of our minds as a result of Covid19 lockdown restrictions. People want to get growing their own food and support food growing initiatives closest to home.

Luckily this work comes with the added bonus of increased biodiversity, food for pollinators, community connectivity, reduced carbon emissions and happier, healthier people. There is a lot of scope for new projects and initiatives. I’ll outline the ones i’m now working on in another blog post. To conclude, let’s talk about you, and what you can do.

Your role:

If you want to get amongst this work and contribute, here are my suggestions.

1- Donate to what’s already happening. Volunteer. The people making this happen need compensation for their time and efforts. Donate money if you can. Donate time if you can’t. Better still do both. Help fundraise. Donate materials, structures and tools to help these initiatives keep their costs down.

2- Learn the basics of growing food. Find friends and whānau who will teach you the basics or join a workshop for beginners before joining volunteer days at community gardens if you can. That way the people running them don’t have to continuously start from scratch. If you can’t find anyone, definitely still volunteer at a community garden! Here’s the list of where they all are so you can find the one closest to where you live.

4- Give space. If you own or steward a building or a site in the central city and want to grow food and/or native plants there, get in touch. E-mail me beka@papataiaoearthcare.nz

5- Advocate. Share praise and enthusiasm for this work. Your positive attitude will cause ripples.

Happy gardening!

Ngā mihi,
Beka.