While growing your own vegetables is quite common, limited space on sections means having a home orchard is not always possible.
With this in mind, an industrious group of Puhoi residents has quietly planted an area in the Puhoi Pioneers Memorial Park to make a community orchard.
The group has the blessing of Auckland Council and the Puhoi Community Forum for the project, which originally saw 10 heritage fruit trees planted just before the first Covid lockdown.
Ongoing restrictions made it hard to continue with developing the area into a community food space, but on June 12 a group of keen spade-wielding volunteers finally planted a shelter belt of edible trees – mostly feijoa and guava – which will give some definition to the area beside the Puhoi River, as well as some shelter in future.
With Te Araroa Trail coming through the river reserve, organiser Pip Beagley says along with making the reserve more beautiful it would be good to have a place where people could come together to play petanque and hold educational gardening or orcharding workshops. Picnic tables are also being considered.
They plan to turn a pruning session for the fruit trees into a workshop next month and possibly get a regular group together to learn about and maintain the orchard.
Beagley says Puhoi has a great community and had regular food-swaps before Covid restrictions. This still exists, having moved online with people leaving fruit, vegetables and seedlings outside other people’s gates.
With restrictions lifting people are starting to reconnect again, she says.
