Kelmarna City Farm

Kelmarna City Farm is a beloved 4 acre market garden and food forest in Auckland’s Herne Bay that has been in operation for over 30 years. Carl was commissioned in 2016 by the Kelmarna gardens Trust to design a redevelopment plan for the gardens (in consultation with the local community). Over the next 3 years we were intimately involved and hands-on in implementing this plan.

We improved access to common areas and upgraded infrastructure by realigning pathways, constructing steps, building compost bins and mulch containment. We installed subsurface drainage to resolve flooding issues and built retaining walls – all with the help of volunteers whom gained valuable work experience.

Kelmarna farm is an exemplary example of a community-centric urban farm providing a valuable service in terms of environmental education and regenerative farming techniques.

STAGE 2: In 2022 we were again engaged to design silvopasture treelines and plant over 60 fruit trees in the paddocks at Kelmarna farm. We created on contour swales for tree planting (as much to get above the problematic wet clay in winter as to hold and capture runoff in the drier season). These tree rows are inter-grazed by wiltshire sheep and much of the overhanging tithnoia from treelines provides a welcome snack for sheep (which is great for diversity of feed/ diet). Chooks follow the grazing sheep in a rotational and mutually beneficial system (aka silvopasture).