[Scpg] New Zealand's top gardener gets divine help Permaculture Grad 86 years old

[Santa Barbara Permaculture Network]

NZ's top gardener gets divine help

http://www.stuff.co.nz/4736351a11.html

By LANE NICHOLS - The Dominion Post | Thursday, 23 October 2008
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KENT BLECHYNDEN/Dominion Post

DIG IT: Sister Loyola Galvin has been voted New Zealand's top gardener.


She's been voted New Zealand's top gardener, but Sister Loyola 
Galvin, 86, admits to a little help - she prays for divine 
intervention to ensure her plants are the best they can be.

"We're dealing with God's creations and I often ask that our efforts 
be successful because we're dealing with such beautiful things."

Though slight of build and at risk of being blown over in a stiff 
northwesterly, Sister Loyola can be found seven days a week, rain or 
shine, tending her vegetables behind Island Bay's Home of Compassion.

"I love it, and anything you love grows. Children that I've loved 
grew and I've done that all my life.

"So now I'm doing it with plants."

Sister Loyola, a former nurse, was named New Zealand Gardener's 2008 
Gardener of the Year yesterday. She took up gardening in her early 
70s, tending the home's four-hectare grounds. At 81, she took a 
permaculture course, learning the finer points of holistic and 
sustainable gardening.

She then set up a community gardening scheme for city apartment 
dwellers "living in the concrete jungle" who wanted to grow their own 
veges. The home now has 16 plots for green-fingered townies and a waiting list.

Sister Loyola said her home-grown lettuces outshone any 
supermarket-bought variety and her broad beans and spring onions were 
simply unbeatable.

The secret to a great garden was knowing good weeds from bad, never 
using chemical pesticides or fertilisers, and always making your own 
compost - preferably out of south coast seaweed or fresh horse manure.

Sister Loyola fought off Auckland runner-up, Margaret Jones, 87, - 
whose motto is "don't panic, it's organic" - and said news of her 
gardening win was a shock. "I felt like a stunned mullet. I thought 
they had pressed the wrong button on the computer."

She planned to use her $5000 prizemoney to coax more old folk to get 
out of their rockers and into the vege plot. "Aren't I lucky to be as 
fit as I am at my age? I'm trying to encourage older people like 
myself not to give up when they're 65 and say, `I've had it'."




Santa Barbara Permaculture Network
    an educational non-profit since 2000
(805) 962-2571
P.O. Box 92156, Santa Barbara, CA 93190
margie at sbpermaculture.org
www.sbpermaculture.org

"We are like trees, we must create new leaves, in new directions, in 
order to grow." - Anonymous

First Annual Southern California Permaculture Convergence August 2008
http://socalifornia.permacultureconvergence.org
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