Zoe at work in a garden

Meet Zoe, the Very Green Gardener

Our inter­views with cool peo­ple con­tin­ue! 1. Hey, who are you and what do you do? I’m Zoe and I run The Very Green Gar­den­er, which is a lit­tle gar­den­ing com­pa­ny in Pōneke. We main­tain peo­ple’s gar­dens as well as sup­port them to do their own gar­dens. (Edi­tor note: Zoe also writes an excel­lent newslet­ter […]

paper bottles of Mothers Ruined Gin on a beach

A ginterview with the mothers of Mothers Ruined

Full dis­clo­sure: I have worked with the Moth­ers on Boom Gin — a col­lab­o­ra­tion with my eth­i­cal cloth­ing com­pa­ny, which is fund­ing a schol­ar­ship to the week­end for fat babes that I run. Even if I had­n’t done that though, I would still think they are very cool and inter­est­ing peo­ple who make deli­cious prod­ucts […]

Joel, a Pākeha man, stands outside the beehive and smiles

Meet Joel MacManus, the journalist that Wellington actually deserves

It’s been a very weird week in Welling­ton where we’re think­ing actu­al­ly Chris Bish­op has done good for once with the Dis­trict Plan? Very strange posi­tion to be in. Obvi­ous­ly, city coun­cilors who want a city for the liv­ing and future have pushed for this for a very long time, but I don’t think it […]

“Slow down you bastards”

Tom’s been walk­ing again. Fol­low his lat­est tramp­ing adven­ture from tra­vers­ing the Hutt Val­ley to Kāpi­ti via the Akatarawa Road here.

Towards Tangi-te-Keo

Up the back of New­town — past the hos­pi­tal, past New Zealand’s first branch library, past the com­mu­ni­ty dis­­­play-win­­dow where the Con­sci­en­tious Objec­tors’ memo­ri­als absent from Pukeahu Park qui­et­ly under­score ANZAC cel­e­bra­tions — runs a nar­row path mark­ing the spine of Tan­­gi-te-Keo (lat­er Mt Vic­to­ria). Māori knew the spine of Tan­­gi-te-Keo as Te Ran­­ga-a-Hiwi, the Ridge of […]

Snapshots of Mount Victoria

A few pho­tos I took as I walked the dog in the Mount Vic­to­ria town belt, and of the unveil­ing of a new liv­ing sculp­ture at the Inner­most Gar­dens.   “A Liv­ing Sculp­ture” On April 3rd, Grant Lyon’s sculp­ture “Yeah, Nah” was unveiled by Welling­ton may­or Celia Wade-Brown at the Inner­most Gar­dens in Mount Vic­to­ria, at […]

Kākā cam

With more and more kākā spilling out of Zealan­dia and spend­ing their ne’er-do-well days riot­ing in the neigh­bor­ing sub­urbs, there are now nests out­side the fence. So the coun­cil has set up some nest­box­es to keep the new fam­i­lies safe, and in one, they’ve set up a live cam­era. Today, the five chicks are only […]

Nga Manu Nature Reserve (Waikanae)

Yep, its not food.  But I was seri­ous­ly impressed with this place in our back yard that I had no clue exist­ed. Nga Manu is the largest remain­ing rem­nant of coastal low­land swamp for­est on the Kapi­ti Coast, and was estab­lished as a reserve in 1974.  It has devel­oped over the years to the well laid […]

Serious Monkey(ish) business at Wellington Zoo

Okay, let’s get the puns out of the way. While it is nev­er inap­pro­pri­ate to spank your mon­key in pub­lic, and only Peter Gabriel can shock the mon­key, at Welling­ton Zoo you can, how­ev­er, touch some mon­keys. Sort of. Well, the touch­ing part is cor­rect, but tech­ni­cal­ly the Black-and-White Ruffed Lemurs aren’t actu­al­ly pri­mates, they’re a […]

Spot That Pigeon!

Take a break from watch­ing polls and start watch­ing birds with The Great Ker­erū Count. For­est & Bird have teamed up with local com­pa­ny Thun­dermaps to cre­ate an easy way for all of us to track these mag­nif­i­cent yet near-threat­ened native pigeons, using the Thun­dermaps smart­phone apps or web appli­ca­tion. Ker­erū are vital to the health of our […]