Grow your own groceries - Marfell community garden

A community garden project at Marfell in New Plymouth is promoting healthy eating by teaching people how to grow their own vegetables at home.

The Marfell Combined Cultural Centre started the garden to encourage families to get more involved in growing their own food to save money. Co-ordinator Janeen Page also wanted to inspire people to eat more fruit and vegetables. Janeen says gardens reconnect people with where food comes from and are a step towards healthy eating.

"Families can come to the garden and learn basic gardening skills to take back home."

She says people can also share knowledge at free gardening workshops covering vegetable growing, seed raising, home composting and indigenous crops, as well as simple salads, soups and fermented foods.

"We believe in the proverb - give a man a fish feed him for a day, teach him how to fish and he will feed himself for a lifetime."

Community gardens have also been shown to initiate community collaboration on other issues, Janeen says. The goal is to encourage communication and interaction between groups such as Māori, Pacific and immigrants, as well as the elderly, schools and kindergartens.

"The hope is to strengthen the support network for parents and caregivers."

The Marfell Cultural Centre has entered into a community partnership with the HSC to offer the free workshops over summer and the Centre has also received HEHA funding, support from Balance me, Transition Towns New Plymouth, a local garden centre and individual donors.

Janeen says the community response has been huge, with offers of time, knowledge and gardening goods coming from across the city. She says work has now started with the New Plymouth District Council to transform a reserve alongside the garden into community orchard.

Janeen's key learnings for starting community gardens:

• Janeen talked to other organisations that are running community gardens to gain insights and avoid pitfalls. Websites such as http://www.communitygarden.org.au/ are a useful source of information.
• The cultural centre found that offering free workshops generated community interest.
• Janeen believes it is important to show gardening can be low-cost. The workshops encourage gardeners to use recycled containers and share seed.
• Working out of a community centre ensures there is a pool of enthusiastic people to work on the project.
• Janeen advises to start with a reasonably small garden, which shows people what they can achieve in their home gardens. The Marfell garden is sited on a quarter acre section at the back of the community centre.
• Be prepared for the project to snowball very quickly.

For more information about the Marfell community garden visit www.marfell.org.nz