Community

Bringing together people with a similar vision of reducing food insecurity and producing delicious local food. Identifying skills, resources and needs throughout the community and playing matchmaker. This will include things like food rescue, cooking classes and working with community gardens.

Education

Utilising social media to share information relating to food and food systems. This will include how to grow, harvest and prepare fresh produce, the location of local food banks, community gardens and meal providers, event details for farmers markets and crop swaps and information about food related topics like growing methods, food sovereignty and other systemic issues.

Food Production

Growing not only food but also food producing plants. Expanding the current plant nursery to grow as many locally adapted food producing plants as possible. Get these plants in the ground throughout the region (and the country) through sales nationwide and through donations to local community gardens, schools, marae and other public planting projects.

Get Involved!

If you would like to help spread the word or be more involved in supporting this project, we would love if you would do one or more of the following to help us out.

Join our email list

Follow

Follow on Social Media. Our main content platform is Instagram @freshperceptions or you can find the same content on Facebook @freshperceptionsnz. As we grow, all our location specific content for those in the Eastern BOP will be found on Facebook @growitlocalnz. We will also be launching a YouTube channel so keep an eye out for links to that.

Contact

If you have more than a passing interest in improving our local food systems and would love to be more directly involved in this project then please email nikki@growitlocal.co.nz. I am in the progress of forming a small network of people to help drive the project and help from passionate individuals is always appreciated.

Resources

Do you have resources and skills to share and live in the Eastern BOP region? I would love to hear from you (email nikki@growitlocal.co.nz)! Especially if you have access to or know of anyone with:

  • Mature fruit and nut trees that we could collect seed/plant material from for propagation, or excess produce that goes to waste that we could rescue (labour for picking provided).
  • Knowledge of preserving fresh produce (canning, drying, etc)
  • Experience growing food organically
  • Land that would be suitable for food production that is currently under-utilised. Anything from a small vegetable garden to a neglected orchard would be of interest.

And perhaps most importantly – SHARE! Share on social media, forward emails, tell your friends. The bigger the community, the faster we can grow and the bigger the impact we can have.

If none of these seem to tick the right box for you, but you still want to get in touch feel free to reply to this email or to jump on social media and send me a message. My inbox is always open and I would love to hear from you.

Let’s work together on your
next garden or landscaping project

If you have always wanted fresh produce in your backyard or have a land that would benefit from some awesome edible landscaping, please get in touch. We are always looking for ways to help people get started.