Parents of New River School in Invercargill and staff of the Southland District Health Board (SDHB) learnt that growing your own vegetables does not have to be difficult when they attended one of 3 seminars on how to created a simple raised garden bed.

The workshops were organised by HEHA and run by Guus and Rita Lukkien. New River school was selected because the school runs a very successful garden and we wanted the passion that the children had for gardening to rub off on the parents so they could start a garden at home. The workshops had both a practical and a hands on component where participants learnt to create a simple raised garden bed which can be erected on either concrete or on a spare piece of grass. At the completion of the workshop each family was given a 1m square garden kit complete with the garden frame, compost, seeds and seedlings. Mitre 10 Mega supported this programme by donating the seedling, seeds and compost for each family who attend the New River workshop.

As part of the internal promotion the same workshops were offered to staff of SDHB. These workshops were very well attended and subsidised 1m square kitset gardens were available to participant to purchase after the workshop thanks to HEHA.

Everyone who attended was impressed at how simple it was to create a raised garden. Some of the comments from the evaluation where:

• Really enjoyed this workshop inspired me to start my own garden again
• Very good well presented, super interesting
• Excellent ideas very worthwhile. Thanks
• Very interesting and valuable seminar thanks
• Excellent wish I could have brought more plots so each of my grandchildren could have one
• Great motivational talk to get me started on my garden
• I didn’t realise how easy it was
• Thanks for the kits they make it so simple and fast – my grandchildren are getting one each.