The woman who turned 22 manhole risers into concrete crop circles
A keen food grower’s unique food-growing plots raise the standard in a garden of plenty. Sandra Simpson writes.
What happened when a security company owner, who happens to be a passionate gardener, stumbled on a manhole riser? The answer – which, fortunately, doesn’t involve broken bones – is a productive and flourishing kitchen garden.
“I had a quote to put in a raised vegetable garden with wooden planters that made my hair curl,” Heather Jones recalls, explaining her decision. “Then I was driving through an industrial area when I saw what I thought were concrete sheep troughs, and thought: ‘That’s what I need, concrete circles’.”
It turned out Jones had been looking at manhole risers in the yard of Hynds Pipe Systems, which supplied her with 22 risers of different diameters and heights.
“There’s weedmat underneath the whole garden and I marked it out carefully. I wanted to get a wheelbarrow around everything easily and had every circle marked so the hiab driver knew exactly where to put them. The face of the truck driver was a picture when he realised what we were doing – from sceptical to ‘Oh my god, that’s amazing’.”
River stones have been laid around the beds and an espalier fence, made by the bloke who built the house deck, defines the garden and supports a grapevine and an apple tree. Other fruit in the garden includes pears, plums, limes and lemons.
“Concrete is perfect,” Jones says. “It doesn’t warp or rot and there’s no need to paint it. It retains the heat so things go nuts in it.”
Jones and husband Brian live next door to their daughter Sarah and her young family at Tauriko, on the outskirts of Tauranga. Both properties are 0.5ha each. Brian has put in some vege beds at Sarah’s place while Jones has developed her unique kitchen garden at her home.
The garden was made while Brian was away but Jones says that’s the price of playing golf with his buddies. “The lawn is his passion and it’s perfect, not a weed, not a prickle. I had a father who was a gem of a gardener with a massive garden on the outskirts of Masterton, and that’s what rubbed off on me.”
Apart from rhubarb, most beds are planted seasonally and over summer the crops have included raspberries, strawberries, asparagus (“just for me, no-one else likes it”), onions, garlic, lettuces, yams, tomatoes, watermelons, pumpkins and herbs. “The watermelons and pumpkins take off when they hit the stones. And at any time you can throw in a bit of silverbeet or spinach.”
Beside the chicken run at one end – the girls are loved but not welcome in the garden – is a small shed, the roof being the first piece acquired, found when Jones was working, “and the deck builders did the rest”. A pipe off the roof channels rainwater into a drum.
Because the risers have drainage holes in the sides, she can leave a hose dribbling on top “and when water starts to come out the sides, I know they’ve had enough”.
Her latest addition is an arch, one of three made from a sheet of steel reinforcing mesh and flexed into shape. In her vege garden, the arch hosts a cucumber on one side and beans on the other.
The other two arches have gone into Brian’s ever-extending vege patch, which includes potatoes, kūmara, sweetcorn, passionfruit and blueberries, and a greenhouse with, among other things, a papaya tree and a pineapple plant. He also put in a row of sunflowers for their five grandchildren to enjoy.
“We’re providing fruit and veges for four families, as well as preserving and making jams and so on,” Jones says. “All the things my parents did when I was growing up.”