Growing your own

Switzer Residential Care in Kaitaia has caught on to the trend of having a vegetable garden. Offenders serving community work sentences had to start the garden from scratch about six months ago. The eventual harvest was enormous.

Glen Cowie is the Facilities Manager of this home with about 70 residents and one of the people behind this vegetable garden. “We had some assistance provided before by offenders on community work sentences. Because that went well we approached the Community Probation Service to see if they could help us out again.

“The result was just amazing. In April we still had beans coming out of our ears. We are hoping the winter harvest will be just as good as we have planted heaps; cabbages and such. I don’t know much about that side of things. Iva Grant, our gardener, decides what we need for each season.”

Senior Community Work Supervisor Reno Matiu says that at the end of March they planted cabbages, together with cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, carrots and leeks. “We also trimmed the kumara, one of the first crops we planted.

“It was great to start this project from scratch. The offenders who knew a bit about gardening shared their knowledge with the less experienced. All of them got the chance to flex their green thumbs under the excellent leadership of Community Work Supervisor Norman Popata.”

“I did have a neighbour with a machine do the really tough digging at the start though,” says Glen. “But there was still enough left for the offenders to do in the garden which measures about 70 by 15 metres: hoeing, composting, planting, watering.”

The project didn’t end with the creation of the vegetable garden. CPPS provides a work party each week to help weed and maintain it. “This of course saves us money,” says Glen. “But it also ensures our residents have really fresh vegetables all year round!”