Скачать или смотреть Centennial Hall Orchard Working Bee-June 2025

Wow, wow, wow; the Maungaturoto Edible Village Project has begun with the creation of an orchard around the Centennial Hall.

25 people turned up to help on the day. Some only for a much-appreciated wheelbarrow-pushing hour, some stalwart people plodded and planted and pushed and shovelled for the whole Working Bee. We want to thank each and every one of you. Everyone was very welcome, very helpful and an integral and wonderful part of creating this legacy in our wonderful community.

We started off with a blank canvas of mowed kikuyu grass full of holes that had been dug by the lovely Sam Hodgetts with his digger the day before. And we were so grateful for those holes! It meant we could just pop the fruit trees in and no heavy digging! Yay!

The first job was to plant the trees and then the next task was to lay on cardboard to smother the kikiuyu.
Cardboard, which many of you know I have been stockpiling for the past few weeks, with a constant “is-it-enough-is-it-too-much?” theme running through my head. It was a massive mountain of cardboard craziness dumped outside the Centennial Hall and it looked like there would be no way that we could possibly use it all, but we did! Every box, and piece of packaging was utilised and layered over the kikuyu around the trees.

Next came sileage around each tree, gratefully donated by Ashley Cullen. The sileage was placed in a circle, forming the shape of a wee garden around each tree. On top of this came Grandpa’s Garden Mix from Kaipara Landscapes and then last, but by no means least, came some gorgeous dark mulch that KDC had kindly donated. This mulch is the residue from the cyclone-felled trees over in Mangawhai and it’s wonderful to see their sad demise put to good, fruitful use. And in that nest of goodness we planted a whole range of support plants; comfrey, yarrow, herbs, etc.

In between all these tree circles (or guilds as they are called in Permaculture talk) we layered wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of pale coloured post peel, forming a network of pathways weaving between the fruit trees.

It was, at times, a hard slog in the muddy showers, but we were so grateful for every sparkle of sunshine and every new person who rocked up with renewed energy and vigour to push a wheelbarrow or cart a bucket of mulch. We were all kept well fed and nourished by Elizabeth’s delicious cooking and the whole Working Bee was documented by the talented Sam Kemp.

Don’t despair if you missed out! There is plenty more to come and we are super excited for the next part of the project – details to follow soon!