Food forest first for an 'Incredible Edible Town'

July 29th, 2015

Ledger Goodman Park is the place of the first food forest for Motueka. Its aim is to provide a meeting point for the neighbourhood, free snacks, and education for all in regards to growing food.

The first food forest came into being on the bright and sunny afternoon last Saturday, but it was many moons in the planning phase.

Co-ordinators Petra Stephenson and Danielle Lomas are the movers and shakers behind Our Kai Motueka and they teamed up with Keep Motueka Beautiful and obtained funding from the Fonterra Grassroots Fund.

This enabled them to purchase 84 trees, shrubs, plants and seeds, and muster up a group of about 50 enthusiasts to help with digging, planting and mulching.

The volunteers ranged in ages from 4 to 80 and arrived with spades, shovels and wheelbarrows, sun hats, gumboots and home baking.

So what is a food forest? Petra Stephenson explains, "It's a low-maintenance sustainable plant-based food production system based on woodland ecosystems, incorporating fruit and nut trees, shrubs, herbs, vines and perennial vegetables which have yields directly useful to us in the community".

Petra explains that in addition to the edibles, some of the plants catch and cycle minerals from the air or deep in the ground to lessen and eventually eliminate fertilliser input.

"In a complete food forest there are seven layers and the plants support each other in terms of fertility and pest control and the food ripens at different times, which is aiming for year-round consumption."

Our Kai Motueka was recently established to foster local food awareness and food resilience. They aim to cover worst-case scenarios (natural disasters that cut us off), but it's also about providing good food for the community.

"Food resilience is being able to look after ourselves as a community," says Petra. "The three main aspects to this are supporting growers and eating locally, education, and identifying where the gaps are in our food supply in the Tasman Bay, and then encouraging growers and gardeners to fill those gaps."

And the latest, exciting news is that this food forest initiative has received the backing of NBS, which means Our Kai Motueka can start the second food forest behind the community gardens, linking in with the walkways and cycleways around the estuary.

The garden areas were marked out at the start

Many spades make light work

Part of the end result

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