A heart-warming initiative of Invercargill’s Henry and MacManus families has led to creation of an edible garden for the benefit of the Murihiku community, on the grounds of the Mee & Henry Law office building in Gala Street.

Named after the two families, MacHen Gardens will have their official opening in February, once work on the final garden plot at the back of the office building is completed.

The idea of creating an edible garden came from Liz Henry, the Director of Mee & Henry Law Limited, who together with husband Ross, own the law firm. 

She said that the impetus for building the gardens came from increasing cost of living and in particular the soaring prices of food. 

The new MacHen gardens will benefit the local community. Photo: Facebook

“We had a beautiful cottage garden at the back of our office, which was quite high maintenance. When our gardener who looked after it retired, we decided to reuse this space to create more carparks as well as vegetable patches. The garden was my Christmas present from Ross who sacrificed his summer holidays to work on this project,” Liz says.

The old brick planters at the street front of the office were demolished and new attractive garden boxes were built out of timber with benches inter-connecting them. 

But the real inspiration for the edible garden idea came from Liz’s father, John MacManus, a gardener extraordinaire from way back and founding member of the Spirit Army, a volunteer group established in 2014 to help Southland families struggling to put food on the table.

In 2019 the NZ Gardener Magazine named John MacManus “Gardener of the Year” for his work on growing vegetables for the Spirit Army.

In her Facebook page post Liz said that MacHen Gardens is a new initiative that has combined the mahi of the Henry Family and the MacManus family to develop an edible garden, in particular, her parents John & Janet MacManus and brother Mike, her husband Ross, his parents Alasdair & Wendy Henry and sister Kylie, and Liz and Ross’s daughters Alex and Mackenzie. 

Photo: Facebook

“Our mission is to help the community grow and thrive,” she said.

“The food that we grow is going to support our office and the community via some of the community groups in town who provide soup kitchen meals on a regular basis. The goal is to assist with providing vegetables to keep their costs down, while they help our community in a tangible way.” 

She’d also like to acknowledge Leon Hartnett for demolishing and removing old structures Phoenix Services Limited (painting team), Nind Electrical Services (new exterior lighting), AWL Tree Services (tree removal), Touchwood Contract (wood supplies), Diacks Nurseries (plant supplies) and Hyde Landscaping (building the front boxed gardens and seating) . 

“We have a few things to finish off, but look forward to celebrating sometime soon with a Garden party,” Liz said.