Steve Braunias - On the joy of gardening and community

Kelmarna Gardens. Photo / Nick Reed

Steve Braunias is an award-winning New Zealand journalist, author, columnist and editor.

OPINION

“We are stardust.” There was a seedling sale last weekend at the Kelmarna Community Farm around the corner from my house. Gosh, it was exciting. I am all about gardening these days, and only ever dream of long straight rows of sweet corn in sunlight, with their yellowness and their brittle thin-papered leaves, their promise of the fat of the land. Gardening is everything. Gardening is food, flowers, fresh produce, filth. There is such a beautiful innocence and harmlessness in gardening. It brings the mild hippie out in everyone. It’s Woodstock.

“We are golden.” I arrived early but hundreds of people were already there; it was as though a mighty bell had rung, and summoned the middle classes from their homes. They came with vivid faces from their nice villas and architectural monstrosities with baskets on their arms and a song in their hearts. We sang the same song of peace as we elbowed each other out of the goddamned way to get at beans, courgettes, cucumbers, and other seedlings. We were children of God. Our souls had been set free. We had come to Woodstock.

“And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.” As well as Kelmarna, there are community farms or gardens all over the map - 12 garden beds at the Grow Forrest Hill Community Garden at Seine Reserve on the North Shore, and three acres at the Old School Teaching Gardens in Māngere offering garden plots for rent at $30 for six months. Yvette Thomas from the Mangere gardens said in an interview, “Our stream, nourished by springs and rain run-off, hosts raupō, watercress, cow cress, willow, and long fin eels…We’ve been fortunate to work with amazing Corrections teams from Manurewa, Māngere/Ōtara, and now Panmure. Thanks to them, our native bush and food forest are thriving, and they support fresh produce delivery to the community.” Great contribution from the prisoners of Woodstock.

“We are stardust.” Kelmarna has a garden shop that opens on Saturdays and I am always there, partly to buy food, partly to wander through the 4.5 hectares of loveliness. I always see volunteers, young and old, tilling the fields. It makes me think of the great days of New Zealand communes. They still exist, but things are maybe a little less hopeful these days. I read an online story by a young American who visited the Rainbow Valley commune in Takaka: “I met one of the older residents, who keeps an extensive collection of Lego models and grows a lot of the food for the community. He took me to see a tree dedicated to his son. I was told that Māori mythology says you should plant the placenta with a tree to ground your kids in the location of their whānau, though none of the residents are Māori. I also spoke to a younger resident who was suspicious of the community and wanted to change the way it was run. The third resident I met was a man who lived on an old bus; he is an alcoholic, and often disappears.” A good cross-section of Woodstock.

“We are golden.” Are we? Were we, ever?

“And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.” I gathered two bags of seaweed this week, thick clumps and thin strands of it blown on to shore after a storm. Back home, I ran the hose over it, and chopped it into small pieces. A bunch of it remains in a bucket of water to stew for the next few weeks. The rest I dug into the vegetable garden in my backyard – from the sea to the land - and have planted with courgettes, cucumbers and bean seedlings that I bought at the Kelmarna sales. There is a great non-combative army of us, gloved and gumbooted, happiest in the garden, living our best peaceful lives, forever at Woodstock.