Ranui is
situated in the west of Auckland, not far from the Waitakere Ranges. There is a
direct trainline from Britomart and also 135 bus service from Auckland center.
Originally there
were grapefruit orchards and saw mills there. The main road is Greatenorth Road
connecting to Swanson Road which provided transport for the sawmills which were
out at Bethells Beach.
2003 the Ranui
Community came to the local government and asked if they could use public land
which was underused to build and develop a community garden. This took some
time, but permission was granted.
The idea of the
garden was a woman called Melody Shinneck. She encouraged a group of Ranui
residence to help develop the garden. Funding was optained from Ministry of
Social Developement to employ one man to calculate the área of the garden and
divide it into plots for local families to use. This work relied on volunteers.
It soon became apparent that people moved to other áreas and volunteers were
difficult to find. The Ranui Community house then took over the running of the
garden after the Ministry of Social Developement was no longer able to provide
funding. The Ranui Community Center is an incooperated society so it has legal
standing. It has a commity which makes decisions about community events and it
also has the ability to seek funding from government agencies.
The community
center was able to advertise the existence of the garden, offer workshops on
composting, seed raising, transplanting,…It started children´s and adult´s
classes and because there were a large number of people coming through the
Community center the community was able to get the message to local residence
about the community garden and what it offered.
Today there is a
garden manager who works both at the garden and at the community center and she
establishes relationships with any groups who are undertaking similar ventures
and groups who may be able to benefit the garden or the gardeners.
The garden is
shaped in a circle and there are two tears of plots, one is pieshaped of 25
meters and the other one is also nearly pieshaped. Each plots costs the
gardener 30 or 35 Nz-Dollars per year. The gardener can plant whatever he
wishes, as long as it is organically. The group raised money to build a shadehouse
for seedlings, a large tree provides shade for the gardeners and is also the
focus of any celebration times, where a pizza oven, also built by the gardeners
, is used to raise for garden projects and parties.
All community
groups and individuals are able to lease a plot, as handicapped, refugees,
church groups, or combinations.
