Insiders Guide - Helene Ritchie

Most people know Helene Ritchie as a long serving city councillor digging into issues, but she also digs in the dirt of her apartment garden. A former resident of Ohariu Valley where she had plenty of space to grow, since shes moved into the city shes restricted to the two balconies of her Dominion Building apartment where, for the past eight years shes been cultivating flowers, herbs, vegetables, and small trees. As the leader of the natural environment portfolio, shed like to see more city dwellers planting seeds and watching them grow. Have you always had a green thumb? Yes. I love gardening. I miss the two acres in the country in Ohariu Valley where I lived with Peter and our two boys. We had a stream and a paddock which we planted with native trees and huge vegetable gardens, orchards and nut trees. After Peter died I had to leave there and live close to my work as a Wellington City Councillor and Health Board Member. A friend suggested that I could still garden in pots and thats how I started. I love watching the plants, adding herbs to my salads, smelling the oreganum, the mint, the parsley, the rosemary. We used to have a huge fig tree which has a delicious sweet perfume in the early evening. Now, very occasionally a bird will chirp in my apartment garden and bees will be attracted to the blue flowers of the rosemary. What are the necessary ingredients for apartment gardening? A balcony, if possible, although herbs and some things can be grown inside. Pots and soils. I have a bag of sheep shit up here which has done wonders to the plants! I have thought about a small worm farmbut so far only thought about it.

What have you learned since you began? I now understand the climate where I am, which is a sea climate, though I do not get much wind. I have elevated some pots to get more sun. Some vegetables take up too much room vertical lettuces are better than spreading ones and I can use space like the walls with trellises. Pukas, lancewoods, kowhai and rengarenga grow well; ferns do not. Are there pests at these heights? Snails somehow manage to make their way up to the seventh floor! Fortunately, they like beer and will drown in it Why is having a garden important to you? It is part of who I am. I can breathe better. I love the smell, the feel, and the beauty. This year is really the first that my garden has started to self propagate a little, and to come into its own in spring and summer. It is more lush than ever. In the country, I was used to living by the seasons and I knew the plants that flowered all year. When I first came to live in the city, I felt that there was no rhythm of nature. Today, there is more nature in the city and I watch the changing landscape on the waterfront and the maturing of Waitangi Park. I know the trees where the tuis sing and the green places close to where I live in the CBD, and I rejoice in these. I have a few secret green places quite close by. When I was very ill and could not go tramping I would walk or sit in the bush walk in Te Papa and the green spaces very close by and pretend I was in the bush far away. Can you see many other gardens from your apartment? I can at different levels - the sixth floor and the eighth floor of some other places around me. One day, I would like to do a tour of apartment gardens, meet the gardeners, and see what others manage to do. In Ohariu, we were always sharing - our gardens, our ideas, our knowledge, our produce, exchanging cuttings and propagating our own plants. I can also see the plants of a local caf on the roof of City Gallery. There are some green walls in the city, but there is potential for more. Opposite me there is a big flat roof about six floors up on a Council office building next to and part of the library. I would love to see the Council take the lead and establish a demonstration roof garden, with public access, to show how we can enhance our city with green spaces at different levels.

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