Self-guided edible garden tour

If you’re a lover of ornamental gardens, there’s no shortage of venues to visit. But what if edible gardens are your thing? If herbs, vegetables, fruits, berries and potages are your passion, you will inevitably have to be ‘in-the-know’ to find the best of them. The good news is, if you’re visiting the lower South Island, we’ve done the research for you!

Incredible Edible Gardens Geraldine

The lively South Canterbury town of Geraldine has turned its entire main street into an edible garden. Grab a map from the i-site centre at 38 Waihi Terrace and stroll down to the police station, community hall and a host of other sites to see what’s ready for the pot!

Riverstone Kitchen, Waitaki

Just 2km south of the small settlement of Waitaki Bridge on SH1, an astonishing site awaits vegetable growers. Supplying the adjacent award-winning café, and just a hop skip and a jump from a recently built castle, owners Dot and Bevan Smith have created edible beds on a magnificent scale. As beautiful as they are practical, you’ll be sure to find a few delicious plants you’ve never seen before. Treat yourself to eats or a coffee and cake while you’re there, and if you fancy some new gardening tools, the attached country shopping complex is bound to have something to suit.

Mountain View Village, Timaru

While allotments are usually the preserve of the British, a Timaru retirement home complex with a difference boasts its own impressive

display of these practical and productive food gardens, and with an adjacent woodland walkway to boot. To view the goodies, which are on a gently sloping, sunny hillside, call at the complex’s community centre (staffed Tuesdays and Wednesdays) or phone ahead to make arrangements. If you’re lucky, one of the residents may give you a guided tour – in which case, be sure to ask to see the attached shared garden workshop.

Oamaru Community Gardens

Willow weaving is a feature of the impressive Oamaru Community Garden situated on a hill side at the western end of Chelmer Street in Oamaru, and very close to the town’s public gardens. While raised beds are now a common site, few are built up with the help of walls woven from basket willow. With willow sculptures to compliment this novel infrastructure, and gardens overflowing with food and colour, this site is a treat not to be missed.

Dunedin’s Living Campus

Allow a good hour to wander through the Otago Polytech Living Campus which wends its way from the corner of Harbour Terrace and St David Streets all the way through the campus to Union Street. A feature of this edible landscape, which delights the public while simultaneously instructing the Polytech’s students, is its stone walled gardens. Trapping in heat and warming up the soil, they provide a microclimate that sees vegetables romping ahead throughout the growing season.

Catlins free-to-harvest roadside garden

On the roadside verge of Mirren Street in the sleepy backwater of Papatowai in the scenic Catlins, a give-away-garden is a destination for travellers in search of free, fresh, organic vegetables. Quaintly edged with marigolds, and with a sea view backdrop, it is the work of well known garden writer Diana Noonan whose own prolific edible beds are just across the fence.

Guyton’s Food Forest, Riverton

Forty minutes south of Invercargill on SH99, Riverton is home to the well-documented perennial garden developed by Robyn and Robert Guyton. At first glance it appears to be a wild place overrun with long grasses and unkempt trees but a closer inspection finds it filled with herbs, berries and uncommon fruit trees. Enquire about tours at the Riverton Environment Centre (charges apply).

_{Photos c of Diana Noonan}