Situated on 1.7 hectares (4.5 acres) of council-owned land, as part of Hukanui Reserve, Kelmarna is a busy, small farm, largely tucked away behind rows of houses on Hukanui Crescent and Kelmarna Avenue.

Kelmarna is Certified Organic through OrganicFarmNZ, and we use regenerative organic methods to build the health of our soil, water, and biodiversity, while sequestering carbon into our soils and growing nutrient-dense food for our community.
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Based on the principles of permaculture design, our small farm features a range of diverse farming operations that work together to form an integrated whole.

Each of our farming operations serves multiple purposes, forming the basis of our educational and therapeutic programmes, as well as generating income to cover some of our costs, and providing food for local people.

If you'd like to find out more about the role that animals play on the farm, please read our Animals in Permaculture page.

Vegetable gardens

We currently have just over 600m2 in vegetable gardens, the majority of which is managed communally by our team and volunteers, and the produce is sold to our community and restaurant customers. As well as production beds, we also have plots dedicated to our horticultural therapy and education programmes.

Food forest

​Our multilayered food forest contains a large variety of fruit trees, perennial herbs, and companion plants, as well as annual crops like pumpkins and potatoes that form the staple foods of our volunteer lunches.

Paddocks

Our site includes around 9,000m2 of pasture, divided into 7 paddocks, sloping away from the gardens down to Cox's Creek. Over the years, these have been grazed by a variety of livestock, including cattle and sheep, and Jafa, a Welsh Timor pony owned by a local family, who remains a popular character with the local community.

Chickens

Bees

Composting

Kelmarna is home to a small flock of layer hens, who can often be found happily pecking away at offcuts from the vege gardens, or scratching around in the food forest, as well as laying eggs for our volunteer lunches.

The hives at Kelmarna are managed organically by Carol Downer (Grey Lynn Honey), and supported by the many and varied flowering plants across our site, and in the surrounding area. Kelmarna Honey from our hives is normally available to buy in our Farm Shop.

We demonstrate diverse composting systems on-site, including hot composting, worm farming, and bokashi, as well as offering composting options to local businesses and households through our community composting social enterprise, Soil Factory.