Something special is taking root in The West. On Saturday 6 June, the Triangle Park Community Teaching Garden is holding its very first community planting day for a brand-new Food Forest, and they are inviting locals to come along and be part of the milestone.
The Triangle Park Community Teaching Garden is a much-loved local space where people come to learn, grow kai, and connect with the whenua and each other. Over many months, the team has been dreaming, planning, learning and preparing the ground for this next chapter: a syntropic food forest designed to feed and teach the community for generations to come.
This first planting day is all about getting the support species in the ground. These hardworking plants are the unsung heroes of any food forest. They build healthy soil, attract pollinators and beneficial insects, provide shade and shelter, and create exactly the right conditions for fruit trees and future food production to thrive.
As the Triangle Park Community Teaching Garden team puts it, “This planting marks the beginning of something much bigger than trees. Together we are growing a space for learning, connection, resilience, biodiversity and local food for generations to come.”
Food forests are a long game. The plants going in this weekend will quietly do their work for years before the canopy fills out and fruit trees start producing in earnest. That is part of the magic. The people who turn up on Saturday will be able to walk past in five, ten, twenty years and know they were there at the very beginning.
Projects like this matter to The West. They build local food resilience, restore biodiversity, and bring neighbours together around a shared kaupapa. They turn an ordinary patch of land into a living classroom and a working larder. And they remind us that the best community spaces are the ones the community itself helps to grow.
If you would like to be part of the day, here are the details:
🌱 Saturday 6 June
🌱 10am
🌱 Triangle Park Community Teaching Garden
Bring sturdy shoes, gloves and clothing suitable for the weather. No experience needed, just a willingness to get your hands in the soil and meet some lovely people.
Learn more about Triangle Park Community Teaching Garden and follow them on Facebook for updates on the day.
If you or your organisation could use support from The Trusts, find out how to apply at thetrusts.co.nz/our-funds.
