Kelmarna Gardens

Kelmarna Gardens
By James Littlewood

I arrived at lunchtime. At first this made me nervous: maybe nobody would talk to me. Big mistake. Lunch time, it turns out, is exactly the best time to visit a community garden. The friendly, jovial types at Kelmarna Gardens couldn’t have been nicer. No sooner was I seated at a wobbly garden table than someone kindly turned up with a pot of freshly harvested herbal tea, with verdant stems of tulsi, kawakawa and lemon verbena peeking out from under the lid. Fresh, refreshing and lovely: this was memorable, and I hadn’t even begun.

Staffers (we never got as far as job titles) Adrian Roche, Judy Keats and Andy Boor gave me a bit of history. The land was first converted into a garden in 1981 by a mental health charity, who ran it primarily for the therapeutic benefits of getting your hands dirty and watching the results grow.

But then the time came for that organisation to move on, and a new trust was formed with a kaupapa more aligned to the holistic aspects of gardening: organic, hand grown food; community engagement; general sustainability. Not that those things weren’t there at the outset, and mental health remains a core part of the practice. Communities representing a range of mental illnesses continue to access Kelmarna Gardens.

But there’s more to mental health than treating illness. The day I visited, a group of school children were learning all about bugs and compost. Scurrying through the rows of bee-friendly fruits and flowers, they couldn’t have been happier, more attentive or more naturally inquisitive.

The Kelmarna Gardens sprawl over a hectare of north facing slopes in the centre of Auckland’s funky inner west, straddling the divide between Grey Lynn and Ponsonby. It’s an idyllic all day sun trap of over a hectare and you can practically hear the real estate agents weeping.

Not that everything is always well in the valley. Recently, the Gardens were at the centre of a fracas involving a small number of cattle, gifted by Mt Albert Grammar School. The cattle did a good job keeping down the grass in a sizable chunk of land that was beyond the community’s resources for cultivation. With limited funds, butchering the beasts and selling the meat would have returned a useful surplus, and the practice resonated strongly with the kaupapa to educate people of the hows and wherefores of food production. At least, that was the idea. But not everyone agreed on the kaupapa. Protestors eventually won the day, footing the bill to truck the cows off to Te Wai o Pounamu to live out their days in clover. Not exactly a carbon friendly exercise, and disappointing for the community who’d tended them for years, but a good outcome for the cows.

Still, nobody was bothered the day I turned up. The school kids busied themselves chasing butterflies; one group of gardeners sliced apples at a table under a tree while another group took them off and stewed them. In the same kitchen, yet another group did the dishes while chatting, laughing and planning the afternoon’s mahi. More people were harvesting spring onions and beets for the Sunday market at Grey Lynn Community Centre.

A young man showed me his maggot farm. I think they’re called black soldier flies. The grubs are easily 10mm in length: the biggest I’ve seen (not that I’m expert). He said they not only create compost, but are excellent chicken feed. Really? Of course. What would you rather, he said, a dry pellet, or one of these juicy guys? Before I could answer (and how could I?) he enthused: “more compost, more flies, more maggots, more chickens, more eggs!”

Now, Kelmarna Gardens is in another transitional phase. While retaining its robust community ethos, it’s less about individual’s plots, and more about urban farming, selling its produce at the Grey Lynn market, and its own on-site store. This bolsters numerous other revenue-earning activities like a commercial composting service and a regular programme of workshops. Perhaps economic viability is the better part of organic ecology … or is it the other way round?

Kelmarna Gardens, 12 Hukanui Cres, Grey Lynn. Shop hours: Wednesday - Friday, 10 am - 4 pm. Sunday, 8.30 am - 12 pm at Grey Lynn Farmers’ Market. Volunteer: Tuesday and Friday, 10 am - 2.30 pm

Image Credits: James Littlewood