Pukekohe Anglican Church community vegetable gardens

Contributed by Pauline Brown.

St Andrew’s Community Food Gardens were established to promote sustainable organic gardening practices to produce edible produce for the community. 

In 2018, the late John Allen, a parishioner of St Andrew’s, was our Sustainability Fieldworker and he spearheaded the team that established the food gardens. John was a director of Rural Technologies and Renewable Electricity Generation, and was a local farmer. 

John was right into running local seminars and workshops sharing his knowledge about biological treatments of agricultural pests and diseases, New Zealand’s transition to a low emissions economy, the need to sequester carbon atmospheric carbon and biochar role in achieving that, and ecotheology.

St Andrew’s land area is two acres. There is a church, two halls, small rooms for church organisation and programmes including the church office, Sunday School, Seasons programme, Food Parcels, Op Shop, Op Shop storeroom, storeroom, a small garden shed, a large vicarage and beautiful gardens. The vegetable gardens and fruit gardens are part of the vicarage lawn areas. 

There are seven residential units that make up the St Andrew’s Court Residential Village. The units were established as retirement homes for parishioners. The produce from the food gardens have been shared with the unit owners for the last three years. They enjoy picking the produce as needed. 

Some of the future initiatives will be to run workshops on how to make compost, planting fruit trees in small gardens, lessons for cooking garden produce, and establishing a small greenhouse for planting seedlings.