Victory Garden – Rural Heritage Day
The South Coast Environment Centre volunteers constructed a 1/10th scale model of an extensive ‘Victory Garden’ using the outstanding paper-cutting skills of one of our volunteers and the clever gluing and painting skills of many others, in the style of John Seymour. The model was set up in a marquee at the Rural Heritage Day at Donovan Park in Invercargill.
It was a very popular exhibit indeed,attracting scores of admiring people, young and old, talking about the model, or real gardens they had worked in years gone by. The 2m x 1m model was supplemented with posters and flyers promoting the concept of ‘victory gardening’ and the advantages of a home vegetable garden and 3 of our volunteers were on hand to discuss all manner of issues. The garden featured in the Otago/Southland Farmer magazine and sits on display now at the Environment Centre where it continues to attract positive comment.
The model will travel around the schools of Southland with our ‘traveling educator’ and will be part of efforts by our Centre educators to promote self-sufficiency and reliance to the regions students.
Open Orchard Project ….
Returning the orchards to the communities
Following the very successful launch of ‘Open Orchard’ through a Southland Times newspaper article, the project has grown quickly to the point where it has involved over 100 people throughout Southland: planting, collecting scion wood and grafting heritage apple trees. We have held 6 workshops on grafting techniques, 10 visits to old orchards to collect grafting material, 5 speaking engagements to describe the projects, 2 magazine articles, 4 television appearances and articles in two regional farming newspapers … this shows that the project has really ‘caught on’ with Southlanders and all within 6 months of its launch!
The Society has produced 30 successful grafts for their own our Community Orchard in the township. We have assisted high school students from Aparima College in grafting a dozen trees for their school as well as ‘potting-up’ dozens of seedling-grown apple and plum seedlings for future grafting and planting.. Three of our members ‘manned’ a display at the Rural Heritage Day in Invercargill which included a heritage apple display and as a result fielded endless questions about Open Orchard, booked visits to orchards and to our Riverton demonstration orchard. Many of those visits have since been made.
A series of articles have been ‘penciled-in’ by reporters and a photographer from the Southland Times, timed to follow the seasonal progress of the orchard. We also presented a paper on Open Orchard at the Environmental Educator Conference at Dunedin in mid January.
SOUTHERN FRUIT TREE SEARCH
Along side the Open orchard project we are recording and saving our local heritage fruit trees for future generations.
Fruit trees that do well down here and have survived so long are ideal for our region and some may only be found here- so it is important we keep the best of the old strains alive while at the same time trialing some new varieties that may also do very well.
This Southland wide project began last year with an article in the Southland Times (late autumn 2007) -drawing a lot interest and several trees and orchards came to light. The Guyton’s had already gathered over 40+ heritage varieties over the last 15 years and another 20+ heritage varieties were found in 2007.
2008 we would like to survey the whole of Southland – mapping and identifying where all the old orchards and fruit trees are, how healthy they are and how well they produced in their prime.
One young tree of each old variety that produces well in Southland would be created (grafting scion wood onto root stock) to be included in our Southland Fruit Tree collection. These trees will provide scion wood for any Southlander who would like to put back orchards around Southland for decades to come. Identifying the original name for these trees, which areas of Southland they do best in, including photos, will help us create a great information resource.
Can you help?
We need co-coordinators in every corner of Southland to advertise in their local town for the location of these trees and record them carefully.
We will visit and take cuttings all the endangered trees and orchards 2008, (the ones that are likely to be removed in the next 18 months or be on their ‘last legs’)
In 2009 and 2010 we will process the ‘Safe’ orchards.
page eight
back to front cover
