Healthy Families Far North, Sport Northland Local Community Connector in partnership with other organisations and some residents from Kaikohe community have been involved in gathering a range of perspectives on the current food system of Kaikohe.

With the help of facilitators Innovate Change, Kahui Taupa, a group of stakeholders made up of key community organisations and champions facilitated six group sessions with a range of Kaikohe community members to identify, test and refine a range of approaches to improve access to healthy and nutritious food for the people and whanau living in Kaikohe.

With all the insights gathered through the sessions, Healthy Families facilitated two community meals in Kaikohe and the outcome from the two meals identified the need for a community garden.

The Kaikohe Business Association was approached to see if it was possible to access the Kaikohe Library square as the site for the start of the gardens. Local business were supportive of the project along with FNDC, Kaikohe Community Probation, AKAU and local resident Robin Craig.

Community Probation led the project providing the manpower to clean the site for planting and Keri Cell Nursey donating all the seedlings for planting.

Kaikohe now has five boxes of vegetable plants that in less than eight weeks can be harvested by anyone in the community.