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n a little piece of land, in the middle of a “Obig, bustling city, there lived a beautiful garden overflowing with flowers and bees and good things to eat.” If this sounds like something from a children’s story book, be assured such places do exist. And what’s more, they are the promise of things to come. Enter OMG Welcome to the Organic Market Garden (OMG), inner-city Auckland’s very own fairy-tale come true. The 700-square-metre slice of paradise is the work of Levi Brinsdon-Hall and For the Love of Bees (FTLOB), the umbrella group that underpins its creation. A community garden in a former life, the sloping piece of land is sandwiched between commercial premises at the top of busy Symonds Street. It is owned and leased to OMG by City Rail Link. When City Rail Link approached FTLOB to see what could be done to extend the growing potential of the site, the group was immediately interested. It had already carried out several educational gardening projects in the city, but had not tackled food systems in a really bold way. OMG saw the Symonds Street land as their chance to prove fresh food for the city could come from within its own environment. Now, just 18 months later, the market garden is open four days a week and is thriving with growth and opportunities. It boasts rat-free composting, soil bursting with life and biodiversity, educational and internship opportunities, a host of volunteers and enough produce to supply 30 boxes of organically-grown vegetables each week to its subscribers. And it pays a living wage to its head gardener, Levi. Challenges ahead When Levi embarked on the OMG project, he brought with him five years of home gardening experience alongside lessons learned from attending a raft of relevant workshops and a passion for garden research. But what he may have been less prepared for was also being the market garden’s accountant, social media manager, and volunteer co-ordinator. It was a steep learning curve; but not as steep as the Above from left The last of the climbing beans for the season; Levi at work in the garden. Opposite The mission to prove fresh food could be grown for the city, in the city, was accepted. gardener.kiwi kiwigardener 17
opposite Clockwise from top left Rodentproof compost bins; Seedlings will spend three weeks to three months in the greenhouse before being transplanted; The final product often ends up in a vege box that locals subscribe to receive weekly; The garden relies on its greenhouse to keep on growing; Tim Bowater manages the composting at OMG; The garden is visible to the public, which is exactly the way Levi likes it. challenge yet to come. Once the garden swung into commercial production, Levi also became a ‘salesperson’, one of the hardest roles he’s faced, he says. “It really sucks not knowing how to sell. I had to literally walk into restaurants and cafés and learn to be that person who put a dollar value on every leaf we could grow. Working in the garden and with people, that was the easy part. Selling was so much harder.” The vege box model But Levi did rise to the challenge and while the garden initially began selling to a few loyal cafés, and even to high-end restaurants, it was the development of the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) system that set in motion the true commercial potential of the garden. “Our own local community now supports the garden, subscribing upfront to weekly boxes of produce,” explains Levi. “Those boxes contain at least 12 different varieties of vegetables and herbs, and with the exception of 8kg of salad greens, which I take to a cafe 3km away, everyone comes in person to the garden to collect their veges. And we use no single-use packaging.” The advantage of selling so locally also means customers see the garden that grows their food. They meet Levi, the garden’s volunteer community and they can even help harvest the produce if they want to. If a customer can’t collect their box in person, they can designate someone to do it for them, or they can choose to donate their box of produce to the garden volunteers or to someone without the cash to buy the fresh food they require. Best of all, the box system provides the garden $1200 a week, which means the enterprise is now financially self-supporting. ‘We’re a business now’ City Rail Link not only paid for OMG’s initial funding, but also provides six months of Levi’s wage by diverting income generated from advertising on the garden’s street frontage. The funding helped OMG establish its infrastructure, build a greenhouse and buy in compost. But now they are selling produce, the project is selfsufficient. “That’s encouraging for other start-up funders because they can be assured that once they’ve helped out with initial costs, that’s all they have to do to see their investment amplified and a project become self-sustainable,” says Levi. ‘Regenerative growing’ While the garden doesn’t claim to be organiccertified, it does follow organic principles and extends the concept even further. “What we have,” says Levi, “is a regenerative, biological market garden. Organic growing means your inputs come from an organic source; you’re not using synthetic fertiliser, for example. “But we do more to follow how nature works and to amplify that. We farm in a way that’s biologically diverse by including a whole range of plants, up to 10 species, in a six-metre row. We use high-quality compost and we harvest using the best practice. Regenerative gardening is about bringing land back to life and developing it in such a way that it thrives in an exponential way.” Pest & disease management The theory behind OMG’s diverse planting strategy is, that should a species be hit by a pest or disease, potentially non-susceptible plants on either side of the affected area will act as a buffer to prevent the spread of the damaging condition. But Levi goes further in his bid to tackle pests and disease. Using a foliar-feed fertiliser from Biologix, Levi’s main way of protecting his plants is simply to give them more of what they naturally crave. Feeding the garden once to twice a week means the vegetables can absorb millions of microbes and nutrients through their leaves, building up their health to the point where they can resist almost any invasion. Planting regime OMG also prefers to transplant most of its plants into the garden, with only root crops and some salad greens being sown directly into the ground. When direct sowing does occur, it is managed in such a way that the vegetable becomes a succession crop; coming through after the canopy crop has been harvested. This method makes the most of limited space, enhances soil life and gives a faster turnover of produce. This unique way of gardening relies heavily on OMG’s greenhouse, where seedlings-in-waiting can be growing in individual pots for anything from three weeks to three months before being transplanted. Mixing it up The garden now makes its own potting mix using worm castings, sieved compost and an organiccertified potting mix, which provides a nice sandy base for raising seeds. And while most of us are concerned that our commercial growing mediums are sterile, OMG would rather theirs was brimming with life so that there’s no room for pathogens to colonise. Growing Community While many of us treat our gardens as an escape from the everyday assaults of the world, OMG’s head gardener likes growing community as much as food. “I see the garden as a place for every living thing: insects, animals, plants and people. It’s a space that can regenerate the community as 18 kiwigardener gardener.kiwi
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