Garden Projects

What we do

Helping community groups and households develop self-sufficient indigenous garden systems. This usually involves the following steps: 

• Meet up: To discuss your garden project vision, needs and goals

• Site Assessment: To check your site features (natural landscape, soil, vegetation, micro-climate, aspect and infrastructure). 

• Plan: We suggest garden plans, strategies and options to suit your needs, goals and site conditions. 

• Guidance: Providing ongoing support and guidance to help you improve your existing garden or bring a new garden project to life.

What are indigenous garden systems?

Indigenous gardens are agroforestry systems - they mimic natural forest systems in their structure, functionality and appearance with a diverse range of edible, medicinal and support plant species growing in strata or layers in a more concentrated garden space. 

Indigenous practices and systems:  

• Agroforestry - mixed food/medicinal/support crop & forestry systems

• Intercropping / polycultures

• Cover cropping

• Natural irrigation, flood cropping, canal and water harvest systems

• Terracing / Swales / Basins / Pocket agriculture

• Natural soil amendments / biochar / mulching / composting

• Microclimate design - utilising slope, aspect & natural shelter belts

• Crop rotation / shifting cultivation

Why indigenous garden systems?

Indigenous models, frameworks and gardening systems offer ancient solutions to modern problems. They holistically address both the problems and causes of a wide range of health and social problems and provide greater ecological sustainability, economic resilience and nutritional value than conventional gardening and agricultural models. 

Health and Wellbeing benefits:

Tinana / Physical

• Increases food security/resilience/sovereignty

• Breaks cycles of poverty & market/welfare dependency.

• Free organic fruit, vegetables, medicinal plants, materials.

• Promotes healthier eating habits and lifestyle

• Free physical exercise suitable for all ages.

Hinengaro / Mental

• Natural therapy and relief from modern life pressures

• Builds knowledge of nature/natural processes

• Builds emotional resilience to global changes, uncertainty and crisis

• Learn/revive ancestral knowledge and practices

• Escape from modern time constructs

Wairua / Spiritual 

• Spiritually uplifting/grounding

• Develops greater sense of purpose, peace and freedom

• Reconnect to soil, plants, nature and natural processes

• Reconnect to ancestral traditions, practices and values

Whānau / Social

• Build social/community connections and support

• Mana-enhancing - providing for whanau and sharing produce

• Recalibrate our relationship/whakapapa to the natural world and Atua

Taiao / Environment

• Promotes biodiversity, attracts pollinators and provides habitat for local wildlife

• Naturally increases soil health and fertility over time

• Less maintenance than conventional gardens and lawns

• Reconnects people to nature and natural food processes

• Sequestration of carbon through biochar soil amendment systems

• No chemical fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides.

• No heavy tilling or ploughing of the soil required.

• No elaborate composting systems.

• No petroleum dependent garden tools or machinery. 

• No constant weeding or irrigation

For more information about indigenous garden systems, check out our YouTube Channel