Food for Tomorrow’s Children

A Mangere Bridge local of 40 years, Yvonne Thomas is clearly one of our community’s “waste champions”.  She says her head “bubbles” at night with ideas for the Auckland Teaching Garden, which she runs with Mona Nimmo behind the old school house on Kirkbride Rd, Mangere.  The pair have been involved with the garden for the past five years, turning it from weed-ridden Council wasteland into a highly productive and fertile area, producing food for dozens of gardeners and their families.  The gardens are open to the general public and plots are currently available over the summer period for people wanting to try out gardening for themselves, with support and mentoring from Yvonne and Mona.  The longer-term plots now have a waitlist, which shows how popular the gardens are with the current batch of growers, many of whom travel across Auckland to garden there.

An inspiration for how to bring new life to ‘rubbish’, the garden is full of re-loved, re-purposed and up-cycled materials.  Old tyres have been turned into raised garden beds.  Fencing has become support for beans.  Old power poles have been used to construct garden edging.  The garden receives deliveries of old, unwanted potted seedlings from Zealandia, buckets from the airport, and waste tofu, for the gardeners to use.  Almost no money has changed hands in the development of the gardens.  “Don’t just look at something - see it,” says Yvonne of her approach to making use of waste. 

Yvonne hopes people’s experience with the gardens will help them to assimilate old-fashioned values of patience and respect, “for self, parents, the land and what we have in New Zealand”.  She sees the gardens as a resource for the future and the children of today, where people can “learn from someone who does it”. There are huge benefits for people who spend time in gardens, with improvements in mental and physical health and social wellbeing.  She believes the garden is a safe, therapeutic place for people who come there. 

As productive as the garden is already, Yvonne still has big plans!  She would love to see a food forest developed at the site, providing an opportunity for children to see how fruit is grown and to learn when to pick it.  She wants to see the outdoor kitchen used for cooking workshops and a pizza oven to be constructed on the site.  Yvonne would like to set up an area to encourage people to use a Bokashi composting system at home.  The gardens would be an ideal site for people to drop off their Bokashi product if they don’t have space at home to put it.

It’s incredible to see what Yvonne and Mona have achieved in such a short space of time, with very limited resources.  Their story is truly inspirational and a perfect example of what it means to be WasteWise and caring.   Their work provides a model for reducing waste in our community, through growing our own food and re-using and adding value to the resources that are already around us, rather than buying new each time something is needed.

To apply for a plot over the summer, to offer a resource that the gardens may be able to use, or to volunteer your time, please contact Yvonne on 0274997006.