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- The garden ninjas of Kaeo, growing to feed their community.

A crack team of gardeners and food growers puts their energy and collective knowledge into building their community.

Trays of surplus vegetable plants, a need for somewhere to plant them, and a diverse community keen to find food-growing solutions were the drivers behind the creation of Garden Ninjas Kaeo. Sandy Sturm co-ordinates the initiative born of the timely combination of need and opportunity.

“A group of us were volunteering to create food gardens for the Whangaroa Health Services facility until the mandates were introduced late last year,” she says. “Because some of us weren’t vaccinated, the Health Services didn’t want any volunteers on the property, so the gardens became neglected. It was a heartache for us but we still had a shadehouse full of vege seedlings that

needed a home plus a community that needed food.

We put the word out at a local crop swap asking for any available land and got an immediate response from a guy just minutes from our place at Pupuke. It was perfect for a local community garden but the site was covered in gorse and fallen logs. While we thought about how best to tackle that, Rachel Palmer, the Project Manager for the Whangaroa Health Services gardens, had a more immediate project need.”

Rachel explains, “I had bought land and moved north, then two weeks later the hours of my job were reduced. I had the materials, the land, a shed and a tiny house and we had the surplus vege seedlings, so Sandy created a new email list asking for volunteers to help set up food gardens on my place. A team of us pitched in, I got the motivation I needed and the group got the experience of creating productive gardens. We realised that a group of us with different skills and needs could help each other set up food gardens simply by using our own resources, so Garden Ninjas was born.”

The next step was to get stuck into clearing the site that had community garden potential. Sandy says, “My partner Matt started with a weedeater, then a digger and a blade to clear and flatten the site. The result was a small circular area that we defined with a fence made of corrugated iron from a nearby farm, an entrance through an old gate lying around our place, an electric fence unit from someone else to deter stock and pallets to support climbing plants.”

Another Garden Ninja, Trevor Tupe, sourced truckloads of topsoil for the beds from a nearby dairy farm and woodchips for the paths from the calf sheds.

“We grow kūmara on the river flats as part of Te Huia Gardens on other side of Kaeo and I met this team when I was growing kūmara tipū by the Whangaroa Health Services site. I bring my growing and maramataka knowledge to share with the ninjas and I love the diversity within the group, all held together with Sandy’s co-ordination skills.”

The community garden beds were laid out like spokes of a wheel with a central hub and the first plants went in in May. They were fed with pony, chicken, horse or sheep manure and even after a sodden winter, there was food to spare and share by August. As Sandy scans the beds in early spring, she identifies garlic, kohlrabi, pineapples, broccoli, spring onions, leeks, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, cabbages, pak choi, silverbeet, daikon, parsley and parsnips. Soon strawberries will be planted, herbs will take centre stage in the circle hub, and there are plans for corn, amaranth, blueberries and beans.

Another Garden Ninja, Danica Smith, lives a quick quadbike ride away from the community garden site. “This valley was a traditional fertile food growing area so it’s great to see it starting to come back to life even on a tiny scale. Garden Ninjas gives us an opportunity to reintroduce food production skills to our hapū and especially to our rangatahi.”

While most of the Garden Ninjas have experience in organic food production, Andy Waterman brings a lifetime of food growing knowledge to the group.

“I’ve been organic gardening for nearly 50 years and although I can’t do much physically now, I can offer what I’ve learnt over the decades.”

Andy’s own property is the Garden Ninjas’ next project. “My place has loads of fruit trees and food gardens but it’s getting too much for me so I’m offering it up for the group to use,” he says. “I’ll get my place tended and the ninjas get productive land and plenty of surplus food to enjoy and share.”

Sandy is delighted. “Andy is a fantastic mentor and already a couple of ninjas have built a high fence there to keep out pigs, pheasants, possums and pūkeko from the neighbouring bush reserve so we can make a start.”

Lisa Maurer, another Garden Ninja, is soon moving back to Kaeo from Coopers Beach. “I met Sandy through her birthing journey and later encouraged her to step into her entrepreneurial skills that we all now benefit from. She also has local home-schoolers keen to contribute, starting with painting the corrugated iron fence.”

Sandy has a background in hospitality and event management, and came to New Zealand from Germany via Australia seven years ago. “My passion for gardening came from my grandfather, and my commitment to community came from seeing the Berlin Wall come down when I was eight. We lived in East Germany where local communities thrived out of necessity but they disappeared when the wall came down and that loss had a huge impact on me.”

Despite Sandy’s event management background, she says Garden Ninjas Kaeo is evolving without set plans. “We’re simply asking people to open up their property to us in return for helping them grow food and share it. That will look very different for each garden and for each ninja. So far, there’s excitement about the idea and a satisfaction in being totally self-supporting by using the rich resources within our community.”

“We’re simply asking people to open up their property to us in return for helping them grow food and share it,” says Sandy Sturm.

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