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 […]