Wairarapa’s locally owned community newspaper
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2022
INSIDE: Car ter ton cafés need you P10
P6
Jumbo addition to Kahutara Richmond Funeral Home
ARE YOU A VIP CUSTOMER? Read ‘Garden Yarn’ on Page 9 to find out if you’re one of our winners
2 x $25 GARDENBARN VOUCHERS TO BE WON EACH DAY
~Incorporating Clareville Crematorium
‘Facilities in Carterton and Featherston’ Phone: (06) 3797616
www.richmondfuneralhome.co.nz Peter & Jenny Giddens Serving Sth Wairarapa for over 40 years Tried, Trusted and Proven
FLAIR FOR ALL YOUR FLOORING NEEDS
CALL IN AND SEE US IN STORE 97-101 High St North, Carterton Ph 06 379 4055
Lessons from the wild forest Erin Kavanagh-Hall
erin.kavanagh-hall@age.co.nz
For Deb Butterfield, a dream come true would be seeing a food forest planted on every street in Wairarapa. Deb and husband Ray are the driving forces behind Tinui Food Forest: a sprawling, untamed, yet harmonious garden space, yielding fruit, vegetables and edible plants as far as the eye can see. Late last year, the Butterfields opened their food forest, a project over two decades in the making, to the public: running guided tours of the “wild and wonderful” four-acre forest area, smaller kitchen garden, and organic farm. On the tours, visitors can sample Tinui Food Forest’s vast array of produce – heritage apples, elderberries and red currants straight off the vine, Barcelona hazelnuts, and medicinal lemon balm, to name a mere handful – while learning about the principles of food forests and their environmental benefits. Plus, they can meet a few
of the animal inhabitants: a herd of alpacas, goats, kune kune pigs, chooks and ducks, and family of talkative guinea fowl. Food forests, otherwise known as forest gardens, imitate the biodiversity of a natural forest. They contain a variety of plant species, which grow together to form a self-sustaining eco-system: nurturing the soil, attracting beneficial insects, and requiring little human intervention. The Butterfields began planting the food forest on their 30-acre property on Manawa Road – once stock grazing land – in 2001, starting with a small number of fruit trees sourced from the Koanga Institute in Wairoa. Twenty years later, the Tinui Food Forest is one of the largest and most established forest gardens in New Zealand. Deb hoped the forest tours would introduce more people to the concept – and, hopefully, inspire others to “be kinder to the environment” by setting up something similar in their
own space. “It’s easy to become discouraged and overwhelmed by the scale of the environmental problems we face – and that’s why I grow the food forest,” she said. “Humans have done so much damage to the natural world – not just by using pesticides and destroying habitats, but by controlling nature according to our own warped standards. And that’s not healthy. “The food forest is my attempt to do right by our environment and I want to show others they can do the same, even on a small scale.” Deb and Ray, with their four now grown children, relocated to Tinui from the Kapiti Coast, after seeing the Manawa Road property advertised online. Deb was inspired to start her own food forest after reading books by UK horticulturalists Robert Hart and Patrick Whitefield. Though awareness of food forests has certainly grown more recently, the concept Continued on page 3
Deb Butterfield in the kitchen garden section of the Tinui Food Forest – one of the largest food forests in the country. PHOTOS/ERIN KAVANAGH-HALL
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