Ko Wai Māua? | Your Hosts 🌿

Kia ora! We are J9 and Sam, a Wairarapa-based whānau slowly building a life rooted in food forests, creativity, regeneration, and connection to te taiao.

Together we explore syntropic food forestry, edible landscapes, retreats, workshops, pottery, and simpler, more resilient ways of living and growing.

Sam brings a deep love of the taiao and all things te ao Māori, practical making skills and water systems thinking. J9 has a passion for food forests, design, syntropy, and supporting others to get their first food forest systems in the ground.

We not experts or gardening gurus with all the answers - more like enthusiastic learners and early adopters sharing what’s working, what’s not and all the weird and wonderful discoveries we’re making along the way.

Our spaces and gardens are evolving in real time too. Some parts are thriving, some are unfinished, and some ideas work better than others 😄 But that’s part of the magic.

Our hope is that people leave feeling inspired, more connected to the whenua, and excited about what’s possible in their own backyard - whether that’s a single food forest nest or something much bigger over time 🌿

Why Grow a Syntropic Food Forest?

So many cool reasons and we’ll delve more into this on the day, but here’s a few of our fav’s

• it’s good for the soul to design and plant a food forest✨ It takes you outside and connects you deeply to your environment, an every day reminder that we are not seperate from nature but part of it.

• You don’t need heaps of space to get started - a small syntropic ‘nest’ will fit into most NZ backyards. If you have plenty of room, you can go BIG!

• Biomimicry is at the heart of syntropy and it’s very cool - there’s something about learning how to mimic natural eco-systems that just sings for us. Our ancestors did it and so can we.

• A syntropic food forest is like a regular food forest on steroids. Biodiversity, food production, soil health and fungal networks accelerate at an incredible rate in a in a syntropic system - it’s hard to believe at first how quickly it can regenerate the soil. Abundance at its best.

• This way of growing is more resilient to the challenges of climate change - syntropic systems require less water, little to no external inputs, are more resilient to pests and as a forest system, are far more resilient to extreme weather events.

• You’re not just creating a vegetable garden, you’re creating a wildlife habitat! Better still, your design can easily and successfully incorporate NZ native trees and plants.

Interested but can’t make these dates?

Ko ahau te taiao ko te taiao ko ahau

I am the environment and the environment is me