We're thrilled to welcome Katrina Wolff, Compost Consultant at Blue Borage and a passionate advocate for soil restoration, bee-friendly practices and edible garden education.
Katrina's expertise has been invaluable in creating October's spring-themed subscription box, and we're excited to share her insights with you.
I've had the pleasure of visiting Katrina's personal wildflower garden! Her work transforming the back of the Tuakau Museum into a thriving wildflower garden is also so inspiring.
Question: Katrina, thank you for joining me. Could you share how you got started on this path of soil health and wildflower advocacy?
Answer: I've always loved gardening, and around 2013 I found myself with a sudden drop in income when my marriage ended. I had to work out really quickly how to garden on a tight budget. I was already dabbling in biodynamics, so I went even deeper into studying those methods to learn how to make even better compost, save seeds, and grow a much wider variety of vegetables, herbs and flowers.
To be honest, if I didn't have to eat food, I would quite possibly only grow flowers, as they bring me that much joy. I have a little meditation table, where I like to have a bunch of flowers next to a candle, along with other sentimental objects. I just can't imagine buying flowers for my home!
Picking flowers from the garden feels like bringing the garden itself into my living space.
My biodynamic studies led me to connect with gardening & farming consultants all over the world who are teaching organic gardening as an alternative to the common approach to gardening promoted by garden centres.
New Zealanders are buying so many chemicals for their gardens, we are probably doing just as much harm to the soil in backyards as commercial growers are doing to fields and farms. It feels like here in New Zealand we are lagging behind in many ways, and I wanted to help more people learn to garden economically and get better results than anything available in garden centres.
I started Blue Borage in 2018, and over the last six years I've helped so many people gain confidence with their composting. Lots of customers have either ended up working in urban farming, started their own flower growing operation, or moved house to live on more land and grow lots and lots of delicious food.
I've met inspirational growers, farmers, gardeners, ecologists and sustainability experts and I spent three years as a council member for the Biodynamics Association of New Zealand, and got to attend a lot of strategic meetings with leaders of the organic sector in New Zealand.
One group I feel is particularly important here in Aotearoa is Te Waka Kai Ora, the Māori Organics Authority. They run a programme called 'Hua Parakore', which is a verification system for people to become verified organic growers. It's organics as understood through indigenous Māori wisdom. Hua Parakore, which translates to 'produce grown without harm' is looking at much more than just what is grown and how, it's looking at how the grower interacts with their community, the historical use of the land they are working with, and then six pillars that act as guiding principles for every aspect of the growing operation: Whakapapa, Mana, Mauri, Wairua, Te Ao Tūroa, and Maramatanga.
Through my study of Hua Parakore, I've had my world view turned inside out and upside down in remarkable ways, including a new fascination with genealogy, which has helped me feel connected to ancestors from Ireland, Scotland, England and Germany. I have a brother with a garden maintenance business, and just discovered that a cousin in England has recently expanded his garden maintenance business to include his sister. 4 out of 9 grandchildren have picked up the farming DNA and are tending the land in urban spaces.
My love of compost came about through seeing the need to transform how we view waste as a society, and the connection between effective composting and healthy soil. I love helping people make 'exquisite compost', transform their perspectives on invasive weeds, and remove all the harmful chemicals from their gardens.
These are relatively simple skills, but they require a bold decision to ignore mainstream gardening advice. It's like common sense has been buried in 100+ years of industrialisation.
In terms of pollinator gardens in public spaces, I seem to be drawn to spots that are in the most dire state of neglect. The land behind the Tuakau Museum along the railway line was a classic case, and I was overjoyed when the museum volunteers agreed to stop using RoundUp on the weeds, and let me plant up a pollinator garden.
It began with one box of sunflower seedlings (donated by Sandra Brasell, the museum curator), and a box of Dahlia tubers (donated by Kristy Kirkpatrick, a local Dahlia breeder). That was November 2022, and each summer we have divided the Dahlias, and expanded the garden. Geraniums, Lavender, some natives - so many donations, and oh so many flowers.
My hope is that the train passengers get a quick glimpse of the flowers as they whizz through Tuakau. I saved the sunflower seed heads last year, and that's what Beth has used for the wildflower seed packets. Last summer I started picking a bucket of flowers each week and dropping them to the Tuakau Library for the Youth Group to distribute in their after school programme.
There are also Cornflower seeds from the museum - I harvested the entire plant as they started to dry up, carried them home, and hung them to dry completely, then carefully cut away the seed pods, and composted the rest of the plant. Your little seed packets have a mixture of museum flowers, along with seeds from the soil farm cottage garden.
In late summer my little cottage becomes crowded with all the seeds needing to be processed - your seeds have listened to hours and hours of podcasts on composting, gardening, philanthropy, climate change, decolonisation, nature communication, ancestral healing, ethical business marketing. They love classical music, with a little bit of Indie Folk, and the occasional singalong to John Denver or Simon & Garfunkel.
My hope with these seed packets is that you are also able to save seeds, and pass them on, so that there will be an endless chain of pollinator gardens that all connect back to this special garden in the middle of Tuakau.
Question: Can you explain to our readers why wildflowers are so important to New Zealand's biodiversity?
Answer: If you Google 'companion planting' then you'll see lots and lots of recommendations on combinations of vegetables and herbs or flowers that grow well together. It's like nature knows that we need a variety of plants close together to create a healthy ecosystem.
Our commercial growers seem unable to embrace this approach, and are locked into monoculture growing operations, often with heavy use of fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides. Those chemicals leach down into the groundwater, which is slowly moving out into our waterways.
*Research reported here (July 2023):
As home gardeners, when we plant wildflowers, we offer the bees and other pollinators small pockets of land to find the nectar they need. Bees will generally fly up to 3km from their hive, and it's interesting to open up a map and see if there's a commercial grower within 3km of your garden.
Even in suburban or urban spaces, there are beekeepers with beehives located within 3km.
Perhaps, if these operations cannot grow enough flowers for their bees then we can do it for them?
At the Museum pollinator garden I have seen monarch butterflies, yellow admiral butterflies, dragonflies, bumblebees, and honeybees. It is truly a sanctuary for these precious creatures.
Some say that if the bees die out, then humans will become extinct soon after them. That fact on its own is enough to take VERY good care of bees.
Question: For those just starting out, how can they make a difference in their local community's soil health?
Answer: Learning to make really good quality compost is something anyone can do, even if you don't have a garden. I've recently been challenging myself to make more compost indoors, just to prove it's possible. There's a worm farm under the kitchen sink, and three large house plants sitting in larger pots with food scraps blended with the potting mix. This is a little OTT, and if you have space to compost outside, then I think the soil prefers being in contact with the earth. Once you have your own home composting & worm farming humming smoothly, then you may find yourself in a position to help neighbours, friends, family, workmates, your local school, and a wide range of community groups.
The more of us who are what I call 'compost literate' the better.
In terms of planting wildflowers, there are odd little pockets of untended land all over the place, and local community groups or businesses are often thrilled at the chance to have someone come and make something beautiful. It doesn't hurt to ask, if this is something you'd love to try out.
I'll be scattering identical seeds to your packet in a corner of the new cemetery under development next to where I live - let's compare photos in summer!
Last year I helped install a worm farm in the courtyard of the Tuakau Library. They already had the worm farm, based on a workshop I taught for the Waikato District Council, but it was going to be located by the rubbish bins, for staff use only. I persuaded them to make it publicly accessible, and let it be part of the Youth Group activities, who use the library for an after school & school holiday programme. It's been an outstanding success, and now the librarians are learning how to make better worm castings for their own gardens. This is the power of composting - a ripple effect, touching one person at a time, one garden at a time, as we reclaim our connection to the soil and how it is made.
I would suggest though, that this sort of 'community beautification' work should be paid for - if you are taking on a space voluntarily, please just do one season at a time, and try to spread the load, so that there are a few people sharing the responsibility.
Question: How can our readers learn more about you and the online courses you offer?
Answer: There are a few ways to follow my work and get involved:
I host regular workshops: some at the Tuakau museum, and soon there will be some at the Tuakau Library plus a few more in my home garden. My Humanitix profile is here.
I send out an email most weeks, there's generally a mix of what's going on behind the scenes, new online courses I'm working on, upcoming workshops, interesting podcasts or articles that have crossed my path, and I love sharing news about other small Kiwi owned businesses. Sign up for email updates here.
For social media, at the moment I'm most active on Instagram and LinkedIn. Instagram is more behind-the-scenes and what's going on in the garden here at the soil farm, it's my sort of 'water cooler' social space, a platform I like to keep fun & light-hearted. LinkedIn is more formal, with examples of composting and gardening that are highly relevant for the New Zealand business community. I'm in the Circular Economy Business Directory with the Sustainable Business Network, and have an expectation that corporate New Zealand supports the circular economy by promoting compost literacy in the workplace - from schools to cafes, shopping centres to banks, universities, hotels and airports. Anywhere there is food, trees, grass or soil, there is potential for composting to be made more visible.
I do pop-up workshops in collaboration with a wide range of community organisations, and have run workshops from up in Northland (for the Northland Edible Garden Trail), down to Dunedin, where I've been in conversation with the University of Otago, Dunedin City Council, and a fellow Hua Parakore grower who wants to learn about biodynamic composting. The next promotion coming up is with the Auckland Botanic Gardens in November, to show the public how to turn fallen leaves into a beautiful soil amendment called 'leaf mould'.
I love working 1:1 with people in their own gardens, and always reserve space in my calendar for coaching home gardeners - in person where feasible, but also remotely. One of my favourite projects ever was with a homeschool family in Spain. You can book a quick call to talk through the options here.
There are two platforms I use for my online courses (I'm working on merging everything onto just one website). The full list of courses & coaching packages is here.
Enjoy your seeds, your flowers, your soil and of course, your October candle.
With gratitude,
Katrina
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Thank you, Katrina, for your work. And thank you so much for sharing your wisdom (and wildflower seeds) with us!
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