Food forest, classroom, demonstration area, experimental growing lab, community garden club, there's a lot going on at Franklin Tree Crops Association in Pukekohe Auckland. I joined the group because I wanted to meet serious gardeners and it was the only serious gardening club in the Franklin/North Waikato area I knew of.
But I found when I met other members Franklin Tree Crops is so much more than a random collection of gardeners. It's a special place, and a special group of people, several of whom have worked in the horticultural fields as a career, even one member studying for a Ph,D.
At the AGM - the first meeting I attended, a group of us sat on a massive log under a huge shade tree amongst other members on plastic chairs. The gardens were beautiful and welcomed you as cosily as your grandmother's garden. I immediately felt at home amongst people I'd never met before and comfortable enough to open myself up to whatever was about to happen - which was a table of amazing food and garden produce and camaraderie after the meeting.
Great gardens, great food, great people, great gardening conversation - who could want more on a balmy Spring day. This cosy reception had something to do with the gardens, which circled around you. Stunning green wraps you everywhere at the Franklin Tree Crops gardens as you walk around the food forest viewing rows and rows of fruit trees and food crops. Rows of vegetable beds filled with salad greens, silverbeet, brassicas, winter vegetables, and herbs and winter edibles added to the sense of abundance on my first visit. But I think what contributed mostly to the positive experience of being there, was the subconscious knowledge that immense love and care had gone into the place.
A food forest is a huge amount of work, and I marveled at the people who first envisioned the forest of fruit trees and vegetable gardens, then worked so hard to produce such abundance over the years. Apples, plums, massive kiwifruit vines, pears, avocados, grapes, strawberries, peaches, guavas, and so much more, including many different types of berries, grew with vigour. Talk about food glorious food - my stomach rumbled, delirious with joy at the prospect of tasting it - I was hooked.
Franklin Tree Crops is an experimental garden, a classroom that inspires people by the doing, where organic principles apply to everything in the gardens including nourishing the soil, and elevating the prestige of the soil. It is a place where those hungry for knowledge of gardening can grow and learn.
As you walk through it it feels like a huge home garden, but with new types of food not grown in the average home garden. Rows of established vegetable beds and experimental crops and fruits emphasise the diversity and resilience of all the lush vegetation. It's gorgeous. I was captivated on my first visit and I knew I'd be a member of the group for many years to come.
More than just an aesthetically beautiful place and sanctuary, the vegetable beds and orchards are open to school groups who come to learn horticulture and how to grow food. The school pupils help maintain the unkempt areas of the garden, allowing them to learn food cultivation, how to get their hands dirty, pull plants and weeds up, and see actual root structure. They get experience digging the soil in order to learn all about it.
Franklin Tree Crops community garden is a taonga. At my very first meeting members invited me to their homes to see their gardens, and naturally I took up the offer. Wow. What a lineup of obsessive gardeners - what a joy it was checking out the jungles of food forests they'd created around their homes. To have a place to go where the public can learn the rewards of growing their own food, and to meet and learn from knowledgeable gardens and gardeners, is a privilege. I'm so glad I joined.
But wait there's more -. at the gardens I met fellow member Cathy Kenkel, a natural dye artist who specialises in making colours from wild, foraged and homegrown plants. She could help me grow my own colour and unlock the garden potential of the plants around me. As an artist I have wanted for a lifetime to create my own paint. Watercolours, tempera, and oils. I look forward to learning as much as I can off Cathy in the future.
I can't believe my luck - awesome gardens - awesome people - in an idylic setting so beautiful it disguises the hard work going into not only growing food, but growing art, We are fortunate to have a place like Franklin Tree Crops to learn to garden, and I am grateful to the forward thinking pioneers that established the food forest and natural dye gardens so we could enjoy them.
If you wish to join Franklin Tree Croppers to learn about gardening or growing food contact Dianne Smith at franklin@treecrops.org.nz