Going green

Perhaps it's the brilliantly orange nasturtiums scrambling up fences. It could be the infant formula tins that have been painted with bright flowers and butterflies, hanging from an old washing line. Maybe it's the circular garden plots, some dotted with the magenta stems of bolting silverbeet. Likely it has something to do with Julia Milne, statuesque and ethereal in her gumboots and sunhat.

Whatever it is, the garden at Great Start Taita feels like a magical place. Next door, kids from St Michael's School sitting on the monkey bars call out to Milne, the volunteer behind the garden. She's been nominated for NZ Gardener magazine's gardener of the year and has an impressive number of gardening and community-building projects under her supervision in Taita. She sings back "hello" to the monkeys and guides us around the garden. Monarch butterflies glide by. Milne has been here just over a year, turning the formerly empty grounds of Great Start Taita into a model of sustainability, and starting up gardening workshops for children and adults.

One of the most amazing things about the garden Milne and her band have created is how little money it's cost. You won't find stacks of compost bags or soil improvers here; instead there are compost heaps bursting with grass clippings and kitchen scraps, a 40-gallon drum with comfrey leaves and water steeping into a nutrient-laden plant tonic. She keeps a bucket of rotted sheep pellets, seaweed and grass clippings in water as a fertiliser that locals can get a bottle of to take home, "because a lot of our locals don't have compost ready to go". Mulch comes from the council, and gardens are manured with horse poo, bought for only a few dollars.

As we stroll, she throws out gardening tips - how to deal with clay soil, where to get the best seaweed. She won't let us leave empty handed and digs up a comfrey root for us to take home. "You need tomatoes?" she asks.

Companion plants light up the garden with wild flowers, and children from the gardening club Milne started up have their own little plots in stacks of tyres. There are plots dedicated to Maori vegetables, another called the gifting garden, where the produce is given away. Various people have their own plots at the back. Dotted here and there are more nasturtiums, daisies and comfrey. It's the antithesis of the orderly rows you might find in suburban vege patches and gardening magazines. But not every crop is a roaring success. Milne says her last leeks were so thin, a friend cheekily referred to them as "impotent".