Hi folks, it’s really happening! Let’s all catch up tomorrow at 10 am (see event details) and meet and greet. We have our garden plan (PDF) to work from, and we need to mark out where the things will go, who has access to what resources, and what we can get started with first.

Things to do

The council have already mown and mulched the site for us, so that’s the first thing done from the list of tasks in the plan. Likely candidates for things we can start doing are:

• Construct the composting station. There’s a nice easy way to build this out of used pallets.
• Construct some initial allotment beds: 3-4 raised beds, 1.2 – 3 metres, over winter, ready for spring planting. Sleeper timbers or similar (driftwood?) required.
• Minor earthworks, to cut 20-30 cm swale steps along contours in places. I think we’ll need a bobcat for this, or it’s a large amount of manual spade labour. We may be able to engage the council here.
• Plant nursery trees (tagasaste, lavender) to improve the soil, fix nitrogen and shelter later tree plantings.
• Plant some of the orchard tree species that are tolerant of wind and poor soil (feijoa, bamboo, apple varieties “Irish Peach” and “Priscilla”).

We are currently investigating the option to move one of the old shelter buildings from the closed Muri Station onto the site, to use as the potting/tool shed, and the council are willing to provide a water tank for garden and Civil Defence use.

Things to bring

• Gumboots (required),
• enthusiasm (required), and optionally:
• measuring tape,
• a spade,
• pencil and paper,
• any plants you’d like to donate; at this stage we only envisage planting Tagasaste (Cytisus proliferus), Lavender (Lavendula dentata), or Feijoa (Acca sellowiana), and
• if someone could bring a drone so we can get a top-down photograph, that would be super-fantastic and help with mapping and plotting.