Our story

The Waitaki Community Gardens in Ōamaru was established to meet the needs of our community in 2008. We envisaged a community educational hub where people could come to connect, share and learn through hands-on interaction.

In alignment with the UN Sustainable Development Goals we are working locally to help reduce hunger, improve health and wellbeing, provide quality education, reduce inequality and strengthen the local response to climate change.

The gardens have been continually evolving to meet the needs of our community. We have expanded the vege beds, planted a food forest, built storage sheds, greenhouses, and an outdoor teaching space with a hand built pizza oven. Current plans are to increase the size of the gardens and build a straw bale educational facility to increase our teaching capacity and provide a valuable community space to gather - all year round!

Join us

Community involvement is what it is all about! Gain hands on experience as a newbie or share your valuable skills at our twice weekly Working Bee on Tuesday and Thursday from 1-3pm. Just turn up and jump in with our friendly gardening volunteers! Enjoy taking home some fresh produce and learn valuable permaculture principles for organic gardening. On occasion we fire up the outdoor clay oven for tasty pizzas, a real treat!

For enquiries please email our admin: waitaki.community.gardens@gmail.com

Guardians of the gardens

This initiative was launched in the Spring of 2021 and offers primary school children an after-school programme that teaches garden and conservation skills, as well as growing a connection with the natural world, Te Ao Māori and their own creativity.

For enquiries contact Sophia on 021 0448 209.