Slavko the vege and fruit man dies
One of New Plymouth’s most loved and enterprising home gardeners has died.
Slavko Nikolovski, 83, was found dead by neighbours in his Morley St home last weekend.
The Macedonian-born man, who moved to New Zealand about 43 years ago to pursue his engineering career, was well known in the city for his wide smile and semi-commercial fruit and vegetable growing operation.
Nikolovski would often be seen on his bicycle wearing a distinctive op-shop white bike helmet as he avoided the traffic on one of New Plymouth’s busy one-way thoroughfares.
A basket would often be perched on the back of the bike, containing homegrown vegetables he would sell at markets.
In an interview with Stuff in 2016 Nikolovski explained how he had made the transition from a career in engineering to fruit and vegetable growing.
Soon after buying his inner city property in Morley St, Nikolovski got to work transforming the backyard into an elaborate vegetable patch.
The small grassed area behind the house soon gave way to raised beds of tomatoes, chillies, capsicums, broccoli and cauliflowers, all intersected by tidy paved walkways.
Between the house and the garden was a roomy glasshouse where he picked succulent red and green grapes from the overhanging vines.
But the long hours tending to his vegetables paid dividends as abundant produce was enough to feed himself and sell to others at farmer’s markets and later from a stall at his home.
He built a small shed and relied on people’s honesty to leave the correct amount of money for any of the vegetables they bought.
At the time, Nikolovski, whose business cards said ‘‘grow with love’’, told Stuff he never sold the vegetables to make money – it was only for the enjoyment of producing something with his own hands, and to feed the community.
Nor did he expect payment on the spot as a handwritten note he left for shoppers in the shed read: ‘‘If you have no money or not enough to pay full price, you are welcome to still enjoy my vegetables. Take what you need.’’
Nikolovski, who had no close family in New Zealand, will be remembered affectionately as one of New Plymouth’s characters by those who knew him.