Ashburton's gardening angel

The founder: Jade Temepara

Jade Temepara jokes she came up with the idea of Hand Over a Hundy in four minutes in front of her computer. “I sat there and thought, ‘Oh my gosh, this is flipping brilliant and I’m going to take over the world with veges’.”

Actually, the 32-year-old mum-of-four’s brainwave came from years of experience and reflection. She had been working around her hometown of Ashburton for six years assisting families with young children and was astounded by what she saw. Some of the new parents didn’t know how to cook an egg. Most wasted their tight incomes on takeaways and processed food. Jade was shocked to see a three-month-old baby being fed spaghetti out of a can. She would pass on tips of things she did as a young mother, like heading to the supermarket for half a pumpkin that could healthily feed a baby for a week. Jade also encouraged the families she visited to grow their own veges.

“I’d tell them it would change their life as I was digging half their backyard up,” she says. “I had some really amazing times doing that work but I thought there has to be something on a bigger scale I can contribute. I was spending a lot of time one-on-one. I knew I couldn’t keep doing that for a long time.”

Most of the young families she worked with were fans of social media so she figured Facebook was the best place to reach them. It was June 2010 when the Hand Over a Hundy idea suddenly hit her. Give a family $100 to buy seeds and seedlings to start a garden. The family’s challenge is to recuperate that $100 by the end of the year by either selling surplus produce or from savings on their grocery bill, and hand over the hundy to another family.

Seniors sharing their skills

Through the Facebook page Jade enlisted 10 families to try out the scheme but she immediately realised introducing 10 families to gardening by herself would be a ridiculous task. That’s where the senior mentors come in. She reached out to older people in the community who had the knowledge to share with the younger generation.

“The driving force behind the mentors was there are two generations that are really disconnected with each other now,” says Jade. “It’s about bringing the two generations together again.”

Jade credits her own grandfathers with seeding her love of gardening. They both had gardens so when she visited she would observe and learn. “A lot of what they taught me was unconscious. Totally full credit goes to them because my parents didn’t garden. It’s something that’s been learnt from that disconnected generation.”

Every family goes about their garden differently and that’s been an eye-opener for Jade. In that first year, an African family with little knowledge of the Ashburton climate signed up. “I rocked around to their house and they’d spent their hundy on tomatoes and peppers and I was like, ‘What the heck?’” says Jade. “I thought everyone would be quite conventional – spuds, silver beet, that sort of thing. But you don’t think that there are cultural diets nothing like yours.”

In the end, the family figured out how to make what they wanted to cook, grow.

Another family of eight spent half their money on seed potatoes – and didn’t have to buy supermarket potatoes for six months.

The scheme is now in its fourth year and has helped 70 families, spreading from mid-Canterbury to Southland, East Christchurch and the Waikato. More expansion is on the cards.

In April, Hand Over a Hundy opened a base called Te hUb (The Hub) in Ashburton as an education centre, office and resource space. A key focus of Te hUb is a new seed saving network. Jade wants home gardeners to bring in their spare good-quality, open-pollinated, heirloom seeds with a view to building up a healthy seed bank that can be then passed on to other gardeners and used to grow even more nourishing gardens throughout the country.

The Mentor: Keith Dawson

Keith Dawson, 77, has spent his whole life in Invercargill and has always had a garden, even during the many years he spent on crayfish boats in the unforgiving waters off the West Coast. “I’d always like to get home and put a bit of garden in so we’d have something for Christmas,” he says. “There’s nothing nicer than going out to your garden and picking a nice fresh lettuce.”

Now Keith is passing on his gardening know-how to a new generation. Keith is Jade’s grandfather and was one of the first of dozens of people around the country who have signed up to be Hand Over a Hundy mentors. Since last November he has been helping two young families grow veges for the dinner table. He has dug up lawns, churned up the soil with a rotary hoe and set them on their way.

“Once they get started and they see things grow that’s when they get really keen. I still get excited myself after all those years of gardening to watch stuff grow. It seems to stay with you all your life.”

Cabbages, silver beet, potatoes, carrots and parsnips are the crops of choice down South. One of the families Keith is working with has had such a good haul that by the time winter hit they had already saved $60 from selling their produce and were well on the way to recuperating the $100 to pass on to the next Hand Over a Hundy family. When the snow melts off the surrounding mountains, Keith will be back in the garden helping them with spring planting.

Keith learned to garden from his father and remembers doing gardening classes at intermediate school. He estimates 50 per cent of people have never had a garden, never learned from their parents (who probably didn’t know how to garden either) and don’t know how to go about starting one. He’s happy to volunteer and help people on their way.

“I quite enjoyed going down and doing it and watching their garden grow. I think there would be a lot of old people out there who would like to be mentors. Especially retired people with time on their hands and they’ve got a lot of knowledge and a lot of them don’t mind passing it on.”

Keith’s tips for gardening smarter

• Buy second-hand tools from auctions, garage sales and second-hand shops. You can pick up good quality rakes, shovels and trowels for a third the price of new ones.
• When digging up the lawn for a garden, choose the spot that’s going to get the most sun all day. That’s vital.
• Attack weeds any time you see them and try not to let them get away on you. Keep sprays away from edible gardens – just pick the weeds out by hand.
• Make compost from lawn clippings and kitchen scraps. I always use my own compost – that’s the reason my tomatoes are a success.
• Plant garlic under fruit trees to keep the bugs away. Marigolds in vegetable beds keep the bugs off too and add a nice splash of colour.

The Christchurch connector: Bailey Perryman

Bailey Perryman was at Lincoln University when he started thinking seriously about saving the world. He was sitting in a social sustainability lecture learning theories that would supposedly solve the world’s environmental problems when he thought to himself, “This is ridiculous. The only way to find out if these approaches work is to give them a crack.” So he started volunteering and helped set up a community garden in Sumner, Christchurch.

Through his interest in community gardening, Bailey, now 26, found out about Hand Over a Hundy and got in touch with Jade Temepara, hoping to bring the scheme to Christchurch. After one phone call, the pair clicked and Bailey was soon tasked with launching the East Christchurch branch of Hand Over a Hundy.

Both Jade and Bailey have a strong interest in building community food resilience from the grassroots. After going through the earthquakes Bailey is all too aware of the struggle to maintain a safe food supply in a fragile environment. The Sumner community garden he helped build was destroyed when it was “rained on by a cliff”.

Undeterred, Sumner now has a new garden and Bailey is a big believer in the power of gardening to nourish the community psychologically as well as physically.

Healing earthquake wounds

Bailey is launching Hand Over a Hundy in East Christchurch this winter with a special focus on young families in the hard-hit suburbs of Shirley, Aranui and New Brighton. These areas have longstanding social and economic issues that have been made worse by the earthquakes. “There are whole suburbs that are branded as lost. I can’t accept that because it’s people living there,” says Bailey.

The earthquakes, he says, have sharpened his focus on what is important. Bailey sees Hand Over a Hundy as a way of connecting people and giving them a sense of empowerment and control and his aims for the scheme in Christchurch are more wide-ranging than putting some extra spuds on the table. “It’s targeted at psychological and social recovery and the mental well-being that just isn’t getting the attention it needs,” he says.

Recent news reports from Christchurch reveal that almost three years on from the earthquakes stressed women are eating more junk food, soaring numbers of young people are being referred to mental health services and post-traumatic stress is being noticed in the workplace.

And research from the local health board and Mental Health Foundation has pointed to a need for healthy people, not just healthy buildings – something the Hand Over a Hundy team is working on.

The first year of the programme is targeted at young parents under 25 with the intention to open Hand Over a Hundy up to all ages the following year. Bailey already has mentors and willing young families lined up to participate.

Despite the devastation of the earthquakes and traumatic aftermath, Bailey has an optimistic outlook on his city’s future.

“It really makes you think about your core self and then actually take responsibility for that,” he says. “At the end of the day it’s what you and the community can do to help each other. That’s really shone through in all different parts of Christchurch.”

Vodafone helps out

Each year Vodafone runs the World of Difference programme, paying the salary for a group of people who never turn up to work at the telephone company. Instead, they’re out in the community working to make a difference. This year, Bailey Perryman is one of 11 people Vodafone is funding. In the past Bailey has struggled to get money project by project. In 2013 he has peace of mind knowing Vodafone is taking care of his pay cheque and he can get on with the work.

Want to get involved?

Hand Over a Hundy is launching in Auckland next so if you are interested in becoming either a grower or mentor, email [email protected]. Those in other regions can contact Jade Temepara at www.handoverahundy.org.nz.