Bay of Plenty
Sandra Simpson shares how the KatiKaiWay is feeding the community
Iexpected the council to say no,” she recalls. “So when they said yes, I got a fright!” At the time, almost six years ago, Jizzy was teaching at Katikati Kindergarten and had started taking the organisation into the Enviroschools programme (it went on to achieve Green-Gold Enviroschool status in 2014). She initially saw her fruit-tree idea as part of that.
It took nine months of negotiation before the Western Bay of Plenty District Council gave the go-ahead for Gilfillan Reserve to become home to the KatiKaiWay. “We thought it would be great for people who don’t have citrus trees in their gardens to have the produce available here,” says Jizzy. “And for children who don’t have access to fresh fruit to be able to just grab some and munch on it straight off the tree.”
Before the council would endorse the idea, they asked Jizzy to carry out a community consultation.
Feedback was “very clear” that the KatiKaiWay should be organic. A planting plan was devised by landscaper Hugo Verhagen, now of Turangi but at the time a Katikati resident and member of Permablitz Bay of Plenty. He included in his scheme beds of one, two, three, four and five plants, designed to help kids learn to count.
Katikati Kindergarten, a five-minute walk from the reserve, has been behind the KatiKaiWay from the beginning – some of the children’s parents painted a boundary fence and worked with the kids to collect rubbish before the first fruit trees were planted in 2012.
Although Jizzy has taken the past year off for health reasons, she’s kept in touch with the KatiKaiWay and hopes to renew her involvement.
In her absence, Elizabeth Rae now supervises the project. She’s a member of the local Tree Crops Association, as is her husband Bill, who also lends a hand.
The KatiKaiWay has proved beneficial to both the reserve and the surrounding homes. Increased foot traffic has seen problems such as broken glass and tagging decrease markedly – and on the day NZ Gardener visited with a kindy group, the children immediately zeroed in on the litter, asking to collect it.
The fruit available for anyone to pick is numerous.
It includes lemons, oranges, mandarins, tangors (a mandarinorange cross), persimmons, feijoas, plums, rhubarb, Chilean guavas and blueberries. There’s a walnut tree and almonds too. Generally, several varieties of the fruit trees are planted for a longer cropping season. “Basically, it’s what grows well in the area and what people like,” says Elizabeth.
Unfortunately, some of the trees have been lost. “Two days after we planted the first trees, about five of the feijoas were removed,” says Jizzy. “So the following year, we bought extra feijoas and advertised that anyone who came to help us plant could take one home for free.”
As well as the pilfered feijoas, a nashi contracted fire blight and an almond silver leaf, several citrus were destroyed by vandals, and recently a replacement nashi was stolen almost as soon as it went into the ground. “But we’ll persevere,” says Elizabeth.
Late last year, a group carrying out community work sentences helped the project by spreading mulch.
The kindergarten’s head teacher Cushla Scott hopes the council will offer opportunities to repeat the exercise. “It’s many hands making light work.”
Because the kindergarten now has many more younger children on its roll, the weeding trips aren’t as frequent as they once were, but the kids still pitch in at the KatiKaiWay, and were present last year for the installation of information signs designed by kindergarten teacher Donya Feci and made by the local Men’s Shed. It was hoped that the project would be taken on by the wider community, and although this hasn’t happened yet, the kindergarten continues to pursue that goal.
“The KatiKaiWay initiative was our way of trying to educate the community about the things we teach,” says Cushla. “Things like knowing where your food comes from, taking care of it as it grows and showing respect to the soil. They’re important lessons for us all.”