The Organic Garden City Trust was established in June 1997 after the then Mayor, Vicki Buck, called at the 1996 International Federaion of Organic Agriculatural Movements (IFOAM) conference for Christchurch to be the world's first organic city.

The Organic Garden City Trust exists primarily to promote healthy, sustainable, organic living in Christchurch. We are proud to see that our vision is expanding to encompass more and more people who believe that organics is the way of the future.

For Christchurch, marketed internationally as the Garden City of Aotearoa, the benefits of going organic are many.

In their 1999-2000 annual plan the Christchurch City Council highlighted a number of objectives which they considered to be critically important in further developing Christchurch as a great place in which to live.

These are:

• Long term sustainability
• The attractiveness of the city
• The fostering of strong community values

The Organic Garden City Trust runs a diverse range of projects. Each of which is targeted at different areas of the community, always with the goal of promoting healthy, sustainable, organic living in Christchurch.

Kids' Edible Gardens (KEGs) is the project which has attracted the most amount of attention. It is working in more than 20 primary schools in Christchurch, involving teachers, parents, other community groups and, of course, children. KEGs gardening practice is based on permaculture principles - the conscious design and maintenance of productive ecosystems which have diversity, stability and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is teaching children about sustainable gardening. The project has met with a huge amount of success, and in mid 1999 it was awarded the prestigious Green Ribbon Award by the Ministry for the Environment, recognising the project's "outstanding leadership and commitment to environmental protection."

Canterbury Commercial Organic Growers (CCOG) is run by people active in the organic industry. It aims to expand the organic industry in Canterbury through the provision of information, networking, encouragement and mutual support for farmers interested in organics. CCOG produces its own newsletter, and organises field days to the properties of various organic growers in the region. For more information check out their website.

This group runs public education classes at the W.E.A. (Workers Education Association) and promotes the inclusion of organics in mainstream tertiary education. A new initiative of the Organic Garden City Trust is our Organic Hotline run in association with the Christchurch Polytechnic School of Horticulture. If you have a query regarding organics and we can't answer it from the office, we will pass it on to students at the Polytech who will do the research and get back to you with the answer.

To implement sustainable organic practices through networking, education and community and home gardening.

This is a new group set up to tackle the Christchurch City Council's use of chemicals to control pests. If Auckland City — which suffers far more from invasive weeds than does Christchurch — can develop a comprehensive policy governing the use of chemicals, and can substantially cut back on its chemical use, then so can Christchurch. At present, Christchurch has no policy regarding pesticide use, and spraying is left largely to the discretion of those actually doing it. This is unacceptable and by raising public awareness and alerting the Council to the dangers they are creating for the city's population, we can significantly reduce chemical use in Christchurch.