Lawn to Lunch
Waste to Wealth
Nurturing with Nature
Enjoying the principles of permaculture, working WITH nature and recycling materials to produce your own organic, nutrient-dense food in abundance with minimum work and maximum beauty.
The Movement
What if Auckland's gardens became nature's paradise whilst also producing delicious, organic, healthy nutrient dense food on our doorsteps, reusing useful materials from construction waste, all with minimum work and maximum beauty?
What if these gardens linked together into a giant mandala of regenerated spaces for people, trees, plants and wildlife to roam and enjoy the fruits?
What if YOU Gifted your garden to Nature and realised all these things for yourself, your friends and whānau?
The Challenge
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Auckland’s gardens are a significant part of the increasing 500 hectares of urban space. Population is increasing and housing is densifying.
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Meanwhile, across the globe, scientists are predicting that just 60 years of harvests remain in our chemically depleted agricultural soils.
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Carbon dioxide continues to be pumped into the air and people are disconnected from their food, especially Tamariki.
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Convenience’ diets are prevalent, high in sugar and preservatives as shelf life trumps nutrition and health.
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Global insect numbers are declining at alarming rates, not least the honey bee who is responsible for pollinating some 80% of our food.
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Our society is one of a 'waste culture' - landfill is growing, whilst resources are dwindling. Nature does not 'do waste' - every output is someone else's input.
Regenerative Agriculture is a massive hope in the world, but what of the potential for our home gardens?
Gift-The-Garden activates people and their places to help to resolve all these challenges and move us into to a new era of living and working WITH nature for mutual health and wellbeing. Alone, each garden provides some benefit to some people and nature BUT en masse, significant impact begins...
The Opportunity
Gifting our gardens to nature significantly contributes towards addressing these challenges.
Using Permaculture principles for low maintenance, maximum yield, the gardens grow nutrient dense food. Auckland’s families can be part of the solution, increasing biodiversity whilst enjoying all the benefits of a living breathing natural space.
Working with the construction industry, we also redirect resources from landfill to gardens to create beautiful functional features for wildlife habitat, food growing, furniture and art.
Layers of benefits include:
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Increasing volumes of living soil, sinking carbon
Living soil is a carbon sink. A few millimetres increase in the thickness of living soil across 10% of our arable land globally will be enough to counter current Carbon emissions. The carbon becomes a valuable soil commodity used to create nutrient dense food and insect, wildlife habitat. Imagine, then the impact of this across all our gardens collectively - we can do it! It's easy...
The most restorative thing we can do for the planet today is to build a fertile soil.
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Better mental wellbeing through increased contact with nature and the soil
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Improved physical health through eating organic nutrient dense food
Gardens have a big part to play in lifting the physical and mental health and wellbeing of the people directly. Scientists have verified that Soil microbes and human health are linked.
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Increasing biodiversity
Working WITH nature means activating all those creatures who naturally do all the jobs in the garden so we don't have to! Including weeding, feeding, pest control and more. Imagine waking to a garden where the birdsong drowns out the traffic and the hum of bees is everywhere.
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Food grown on the doorstep so reducing ‘food miles’.
Gift-The-Garden gets participants up and running with a thriving life-filled garden, super fast at low cost and on-going low maintenance.
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Redirected resources from landfill
Our construction industry partners gift 'waste' products which would otherwise go to landfill. This 'waste' is actually a great resource providing fantastic building material and wildlife habitat such as 'dry stone walling' made from broken concrete paving and cardboard as mulch. Old baths as ponds/worm farms...
“All the world’s problems
can be solved in a garden!”
Geoff Lawton, Permaculturist
The Gift
How does it work?
Gift-The-Garden works in three ways:
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You decide to ‘Gift’ your garden to nature, welcoming in, sustaining and nurturing all life and call in one of our permaculture designers.
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Your designer helps organise friends, whānau and other key stakeholders such as the Construction Industry ‘Gift’ the garden with donations in time, materials or funding, making your new garden a high return but lower cost option.
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The Garden ‘Gifts’ back to friends and whānau with food, joy and a sense of wellbeing and to nature with living habitat to increase biodiversity and life.
Everyone wins!
What do the gardens comprise?
The exact make-up of the gardens will be unique to each place, however, typical gardens comprise:
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Human edibles – Fruit, vegetables, and edible flowers
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Wildlife edibles – Wildflower lawn conversion, Watering feature for birds and insects
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Human habitat - Seating, viewing and eating areas
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Wildlife habitat – Trees, hedges, Insect hotels, etc
How do you Gift your Garden?
The Gardens
Explore our gardens:
Wadhamville Garden for Wellbeing
The first Gifted Garden, a productive wildlife paradise set in the heart of the city on a challenging steep site.
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The Gift
An Ecotherapy journey, through miniature food forest, mandala garden, snake path ,(aka 'on contour' water soak), bringing people and nature closer through shared habitat and delicious Kai
Rewilded
Turning lawn into productive food and wildlife space. Building soil, capturing water and sinking carbon, whilst shifting the eye of the beholder towards a wilder beauty
The Bush
Restoring native bush, whilst capturing water via an 'on contour' snake path plus food spiral built from reclaimed materials to crete art. 'Sit Spots' abound along the bush journey with insect hotels doubling as seats throughout.
Contact us
Amanda Warren
021 892 124
Olivia Bayley
027 512 7629