About Us

Ko mātou nei

Rising from the rubble, Ōtākaro Orchard is a community led anchor project in the heart of the Christchurch City Rebuild.

Our Kaupapa

Ōtākaro Orchard is a centre for food resilience and environmental awareness.

 A living learning hub for us and our children, and a precious public asset for the coming centuries; demonstrating a close connection between community and the natural environment with its generous abundance.

We strive to promote co operation and collaboration, (Whanaungatanga and Kotahitanga), towards the care of our land, (Kaitiakitanga), and understanding of the interconnections between Land Health, Water Health, Plant Health and our Health (emotional and physical).


We are all parts of a whole system woven together in the web of life.

What we do to the web we do to ourselves.


Our Principles

Everyone has the right to healthy food and food knowledge to thrive.
We recognise the generosity of the land and our community.
We acknowledge the life-sustaining nature of the earth and our interconnections within it.

We strive to achieve:

1.

Manaakitanga

Hospitality, kindness, generosity and support

2.

Whanaungatanga

A relationship through shared experiences and working together which provides people with a sense of belonging.

3.

Kotahitanga

Unity, togetherness, solidarity and collective action,

working towards the same goals of:


Kaitiakitanga

Guardianship/Stewardship of our land and sea.

Our Journey

‘Ōtākaro Orchard will serve as the welcoming front door to the local food resilience movement which has been gaining momentum since the earthquakes shook our city apart.’

In that time, we realised that supermarkets carry only 3 days’ worth of food and if our supply chains get disrupted, we go hungry. Community gardens became important places of refuge and connection as well as sources of fresh food.
In the past few years, the Food Resilience Network (aka Edible Canterbury) has been holding a collective vision of Christchurch as an ‘Edible Garden City’. A city where every citizen has access to the fresh and healthy food they need to live well. Given that most cities produce less than 1% of their own food, re-imagining our urban green spaces as edible ones is a key way we can start to change this.
Co-created through community consultation, almost 200 people from over 30 groups and organisations worked together to craft the proposal to CERA to develop this site.
In the past few years since this proposal was approved, we’ve built an amazing team to bring this project to fruition. Landscape and building architects, engineers, permaculturists, composting toilet fanatics, project managers, construction companies and community activists all coming together to progress this vision. We hope that by establishing Ōtākaro Orchard, it will be proof that these kinds of spaces can work, that many more will become possible in the city.