The river corridor is probably the largest area of managed retreat in an urban centre worldwide. How can our experience inform processes of managed retreat elsewhere? The question is central to this project, which has developed a model of ‘retreat’, ‘relocation’ and ‘re-imagining’. Re-imagining asks how can the land be re-used for projects that further lower environmental and social risks.
Sarah Butterfield
Sarah Butterfield, Secretary and Treasurer, Avon Ōtākaro Network, and Food Resilience Network
At the time of the earthquakes, Sarah was involved with the New Brighton Project. She is one of the earliest and now longest-serving executive members of the Avon Ōtākaro Network (AvON), in the roles of Secretary and Treasurer. She also had responsibility for AvON’s Mahinga Kai Exemplar project alongside Anzac Avenue in the Burwood part of the Avon Ōtākaro river corridor. She is heavily involved in the city’s Food Resilience Network and the development of its hub at the Ōtākaro Orchard on Cambridge Terrace in the central city. The hub also sits on the Avon Ōtākaro river.
How did you first get involved in the red zone?
During the earthquakes, I was in quite an affected community in North New Brighton and got involved in the New Brighton Project, which is still a not-for-profit group
there. It was probably about 20 years since it had been established when I came on the committee at an AGM where Mark Gibson was the outgoing chair. They run the seaside market every Saturday and put out a community newsletter. We used to give referrals to people for the curtain bank. There was a huge demand for curtains after the earthquake, with people trying to warm their homes when maybe they didn’t have fireplaces. I visited once and they were getting rid of blankets because they didn't want them. I mentioned this to our committee, and we started a blanket bank. It turned into quite a monster. It’s since been handed over to Leta Vs Missions, which is great.
I think my first contact with AvON was with Mark Gibson at that AGM. Mark was one of the co-founders of AvON, with Ashley Campbell and Evan Smith. He spoke quite passionately about his desire to see a City to Sea river trail. This really caught my imagination because at the time I had a dog and we loved walking and we weren't able to walk around the river and it just made so much sense to me. Then I was invited to a community forum at the Wainui-Avonside Community Church, and it was about AvON. I was really interested in all the other things that were being spoken about. At the time the petition for greening the red zone was starting. It attracted over 18,500 signatures.
A couple of people nominated me to go on to the Strategic Steering Group as a community representative, which I had some qualms about. If only I'd known, but anyway, I became part of the initial Strategic Steering Group. This was at the beginning of 2012, if not the end of 2011. No one wanted to be the Minutes Secretary, so that fell to me. We worked with lots of other individuals and community groups, then started getting some funding, which was initially held by another community group. Then we set up an incorporated society and bank account and I became Treasurer of the incorporated society. Later on, Mark Gibson resigned and left and I was starting to think my time with AvON was probably done. But I was asked to be the co-chair for the Network rather than the Incorporated Society, and as the community representative once again. I held that role for a while. The Incorporated Society is the legal entity that attracted the funding and held it and was accountable. The Network is a looser gathering of individuals who are passionate or part of more of the actions and activities.
How then did your activities with AvON develop?
We had many different contractors doing various things and although I went to a lot of the volunteer activities at the Mahinga Kai Exemplar (MKE) on Anzac Drive, it wasn't until later when I left the New Brighton Project and was at a loose end that I was asked to take the MKE on. So for a couple of years I ran the working bees and did a lot of work there solo which I loved, especially after being in an office for a few years. Although it’s surrounded by what was red zone land, it was a City Council reserve. That was how we got the right to plant on it quite early on, and it was designed to be what it says, an exemplar of what the red zone could look like if it was planted like that. We had a lot of advice and support from Ngāi Tahu, Department of Conservation, the Council. I wasn't part of the early conversations, but I know that Soil and Health Canterbury, a group I was also on at the time as Secretary, was also one of the of signees to it. I'm saying that but I don't think there's any actual paperwork. It was a real first, as it was an exemplar of groups working together as much as an exemplar of the actual planting.
I guess that's why I invited you here to the Ōtākaro Orchard today, as one of the many things that came out of the red zone was that people wanted to see more opportunity to grow some food and have urban farms. That hasn't actually panned out because the land is quite bad in most places. And it's going to keep getting wetter. But the MKE had a food resilience component from the point of view that increased biodiversity will increase availability of traditional foods, whether that's eels, whitebait and birds. Joseph Hullen was a great one for saying that it's also food for the spirit and the soul. That’s the mahinga kai aspect in the future. I can't imagine anyone catching weka and eating it. But the idea is that it should be teeming with native wildlife.
It was a lot of work coordinating some of the big working bees. We had the Student Volunteer Army or limited-service volunteers, and corporate groups. When I took it over it was extremely overgrown with weeds and the Council hadn't been mowing the path, and it was a place for people to dump their rubbish. Part of that was getting the access on Corserland Street closed off properly. Now it's got a gate across, so you can't drive in there now without a key. But we were getting a lot of dumping and illegal behavior. So that was a big challenge. I was doing all this in about 2018, 2019. But recently we thought it would be nice to close the circle and we had a last planting there last month with Colin Meurk and some of the gang. We called it the last planting.
There might be more plantings in future, but the Council have taken over now and it's considered part of the corridor to Travis Wetland, which is what it was intended to be, connecting Travis to the Avon River. Originally there were two sites, because there was one on the other side of Anzac Drive [SH 74] coming off Chimera Crescent. We did a lot of planting in there, but it's been overlooked because the one on Corserland Street just looks so fantastic and the trees are many metres tall now. I think it was just a really good site really. I'm not saying we did anything wonderful but going in there and doing persistent weed eating and mulching, a lot of mulch, that went a long way to making it a success. The attrition rate was probably still at least 10 to 20 percent. That's lowish but I think we could have done better. It's always the maintenance that's really important. Planting well to begin with is good but if the grass and weeds overtake it...
AvON has other little pockets of planting in the red zone. We had Riverbend Refuge, which is on River Road, building on an area that was already there. In the last few years we've done a huge amount of planting on Banks Avenue at Dudley Creek. There's thousands of new trees there on red zone land. We worked with kids and the Hohepa Trust, and corporate groups again. We've also worked with Pareawa School and planted their storm swale. That's the old Banks Avenue school; they moved to North Parade. We put a lot of plants in their new site and that was in collaboration with the Food Resilience Network as well, so some of those are edible. And we got some of the Tūī Corridor funding. So that was heaps of native trees and also we've got some in here at Ōtākaro Orchard. And I heard that a tuī was seen near here recently.
Let’s talk now about Ōtākaro Orchard and the Food Resilience Network.
The Food Resilience Network [FRN} was closely tied with AvON for quite a while because of some similarities. I was involved in the earlier stages of the FRN and went to an AGM and became a member of the Executive Committee too. They were hui out at the university and I was the Minutes Secretary for that. A wide range of groups and individuals were involved. So it's very similar to AvON and sits quite nicely next to each other with similar aims at times, including this building for example.
All the different groups identified that they wanted a central place to show what food sustainability looked like. I think at that point I left because of other commitments. I thought they were a bit mad, planning to build a hub in town, so it's quite ironic really that I’m working on this building now. I thought it was probably a bit of an overreach and maybe I'm thinking it still is. But the project grew, as all the projects have grown, including the Urban Farm [on Manchester Street]. I just really feel very passionate about it and it's a really exciting activity to be part of. At this stage I’m a volunteer still.
The charter is to connect groups but also connect geographical areas of hot spots for food growing. At the moment so much of our attention has been tied up with trying to get the building [at Ōtākaro Orchard] finished. But once that happens and we're generating our own income so we don't have to rely on the funding environment, we'll be looking outside this area to see where we can go next. There were lots of organisations that didn't have a legal entity to hold funding. The idea was that the FRN would hold funding for different groups and the building here is a hub where they can meet. It’s open to the public as a foraging place. But to me, it normalises food growing in any area really. The urban farm is where we grow produce for sale, so that's not so much for foraging. Once we finish this hub, I would really like to see more urban farms and gardens come up under our wing. What we really need to see is access to healthy food for a variety of people.
Food resilience is partly about encouraging people to grow their own food. There's already a community gardens association, and we work with them. There’s also a lot of policy-level stuff that we work with the Council on. Their climate strategy policies are basically what we’re doing, so a little bit more financial support wouldn't have gone astray. We also put hundreds of fruit trees into schools and community spaces over a few years, which was a big project. It was underfunded, but we just did it. The Council helped us pay for the trees, but it's been a bit lean funding-wise. If the community decides that they want to use parks or reserves for orchards and vegetable gardens, it takes someone to lead that. That's something else we want to be able to do, to enable communities to do it themselves. We're not trying to be the doers. The idea was a hub for everyone to come here and share ideas at hui and workshops and events.
We've had a lot of help in the past from the Rata Foundation and Lotteries, and a lot of corporate donations. We've bake-saled a lot of our own funds. We took out a community loan scheme with the Council around the time of COVID so we've only been paying the interest; we applied to increase the loan so that we can finish the building because at the moment we're not generating income. It's really important that the social enterprise gets off the ground so we can actually get on with what we want to do. If the money was in the account today, the hub would probably be open in a couple of months.
What have you learned from your involvements in and around the red zone?
Definitely looking after the trees at the Mahinga Kai Exemplar was a highlight for me, and having that time alone was probably what I needed then. That's left me thinking that you need to be mindful of what you're doing with your life and how you're spending your time. It was an exciting part of my life, just learning how to work with other people. I didn't necessarily consider myself a team player, but I realised that if you're working with the right people, coming up with ideas and then bouncing them off other people, you end up with a way better result. So my biggest takeaway from all three groups is the value is in the people you're working with. The more ownership people feel, the better the outcome, rather than one person forcing their ideas on everyone else. Evan asked me once to be a spokesperson, but that was just not something I've ever wanted to do. I'm not a public speaker. I do like to do things to help but I don't want to be that person in front.
But one of the biggest issues we've had over the years is finding the right person to work with in the Council. The strengthening communities advisors (who advise Community Boards on how to prioritise funding), if you've got a good one, that's golden. It’s sad that some people are ill informed and don't understand what's going on in the red zone now, because it's been so hard fought for and it's something that everyone will benefit from. We try to increase communication through AvON, but feel that we’re not quite hitting it. But it's also so good to see the really big projects like the City to Sea path underway now. The transitional trail has been great but to get the permanent one will be a real boon for the East. And with the extra planting that's happening, that’ll pack quite a punch. And if the Waitākiri Sanctuary can go ahead even in some way, that would be a real jewel in the crown alongside Travis wetland. All in all I feel really super excited and things are growing and happening. And the very best thing for me is the many amazing people I've met and worked with who I would probably never have met otherwise.
Interview with Eric Pawson at Ōtākaro Orchard, 20 September 2024