New planter boxes have been installed on Blair and Allen Streets in a collaborative effort between Wellington City Council and the Inner-City Wellington (ICW) Residents Association.
The Council says that when developing its Courtenay Place Precinct Plan, residents said they wanted the area to be a high quality and well-managed public space that included more greenery, and the opportunity for the community to have ownership over the space.
So, when Council had spare planter boxes from our other urban design projects, it turned to the Inner-City Wellington Residents Association to ask if they wanted space and resources for a community gardening effort.
“The inner-city community is amazing” says Central City Manager Prak Sritharan.
“Together we’ve been able set up this great public space, which ICW will maintain as a group.”
Jill Wilson, ICW committee member, says the residents’ association jumped at the chance to put planter boxes around Courtenay precinct.
“It’s a great initiative for everybody, especially as a lot of our volunteers live in inner-city apartments and don’t have gardens of their own,” says Jill.
The owners of the Exchange building, which connects Blair and Allen Street, offered up space to ICW to store their gardening equipment and refill their watering cans.
Extending the community aspect of the project, Jill and ICW also reached out to the Tory Street Bunnings team for a community activities grant to get more plants and gardening supplies.
“We’re super grateful to Bunnings for donating their funds and time to this project,” says Jill.
“We had some beautiful plants donated from Council’s Berhampore nursery, but we were also able to get additional flowers and plants with our grant.”
A team of participants from ICW, Council, local businesses and Bunnings came together to plant over 100 plants. The areas also have picnic tables donated by the NZ Fringe Festival.
“It’s going to be a great community space, especially as we started seeing people sitting at the tables in the sunshine before the plants had even gone in!” says Jill.
