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The amazing community spirit that powers this garden belies its less-than-stellar beginnings.

- A special community garden belies its less-than-stellar start.

From 1926 until 2012, the garden at Mt Crawford Prison was cultivated by guests of His or Her Majesty, growing food for the prison kitchen as well as those caged in Wellington Zoo – hence the hippo. Reminders of this sombre past are all around those who garden there today. Sprinkled over the sloping garden are stone paths, walls, a pond with a fountain and even decorative stone plant holders, all built by prisoners. Among the glass, nails, corrugated iron and other rubbish found by the current gardeners are clay bricks with the distinctive prison arrow pressed into them. High in a tree overlooking the garden is a fort built by a prisoner’s son while he waited for his father.

These days, a spirit of optimism – not despair – floods the garden. The pūriri tree at the garden’s centre is loved by both the tūī and the gardeners who sit under it catching up during a break from their hard labour. Here, those who garden the “wild garden” – an area of plots without hard boundaries – and those favouring the “cemetery garden” – regular redwood framed plots – can compare notes over a cup of tea. As well as individual plots, there are communal ones such as the strawberry bed and the picking garden, and everyone is encouraged to come to the monthly working bee for the garden’s common areas.

The garden nurtures memories as well as plants.

“We don’t always get a lot of gardening done because we have this constant parade of people through,” smiles Patty Zais, the garden’s manager. As well as dog walkers, trampers and hopeful foragers, there are visitors with connections to the abandoned prison. Prison guards, family members of past prisoners and ex-prisoners all visit. “I see a lot of people coming back up here to try and reconcile their past,” she adds.

As well as growing food for themselves and the zoo animals, the prison gardeners also kept pigs and cows, and had a dairy where they made their own cheese. A recent garden visitor was “Rambo” an 80-year-old prison guard who ran the kitchen and was the cheesemaker. He told Patty of an Irish prisoner who cried when he tasted some of the cheese Rambo had made as it tasted just like that back in Ireland.

Patty is the third manager of the garden which was founded by John Overton in 2013, after the prison closed. Inspired by memories of the fall of the Berlin Wall, John also created the spiral amphitheatre garden within the garden which he envisioned as a meditative walk. When John moved south, Murray Robinson took over with two rules: no chemicals and no meetings, quickly adding a third – have fun. Murray stepped back two years ago but still visits the garden regularly.

Patty trained as a master gardener in the US and under her stewardship the fixed beds have been rebuilt and membership increased to 100, made up of 75 adults, 24 children, 49 families and 17 nationalities. A great help in the garden is Stephen Cameron who makes all the new paths, fixes things and is “an everything man, he can do anything”.

Unlike the garden of the past, this one has a strong community connection. Nearby, arborists leave piles of mulch on the roadside for locals to help themselves, the Eastern Bays Scouts come to mulch and weed, and Fulton Hogan recently sent 12 men for a morning’s work to trim, mulch and install a gate donated by Bunnings. The garden is a community site for composting with three piles of compost at different stages labelled Feed Me, Compost Curing and Black Gold.

“People come up bringing their little box of compost and they feel part of it,” says Izzy Shnaidman, a “wild gardener” who works his plot with his partner, Annika Kliewer.

Prisoners were offered horticultural training as part of their rehabilitation. Education is also part of the garden today, and novice gardeners quickly learn the necessity of watering, weeding and feeding their plants and these lessons are much more apparent in individual plots than in a shared one. Patty is trialling using an old bath to grow raspberries in and another member is teaching the others about crop rotation. A session on how to prune fruit trees and one on Māori weaving using flax from the garden are planned for later this year.

An unfortunate link between the old and the new gardens is the impact of crime. Because of its isolated location at the top of Mt Crawford, theft is a problem, and not just of equipment but of crops.

Fortunately, one thing unlikely to be stolen is the hippo. Made of wood, it weighs 200kg and had to be cut into pieces and then reassembled after being moved from Wellington Zoo where it had lived for 60 years. In the now peaceful setting of the Miramar Community Prison Garden, the hefty beast lives alongside the current gardeners and the ghosts of gardeners past.

Few gardens are home to a wooden hippopotamus but there is a reason the Miramar Prison Community Garden is the perfect place for this one.

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2022-05-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-05-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

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