Kia Ora
We've now been collecting and growing old fruit trees, vegetables, and flowers for 25 years. As we've come to know and love them we have become aware of their importance and their value in our lives and our future. They are the strongest seeds we have, with the widest genetic diversity, and have been developed over thousands of years to sustain and support human life. In particular the seeds we have been saving are our own New Zealand Heirlooms, the seeds that have been saved by our own grandparents in the soil and climatic conditions of this land. These seeds are us.

Since 1920 we have lost around 90% of our vegetable seed, around 85% of the fruit varieties and our flowers are going fast. They are extinct, irretrievable. We are so concerned about this we have established a Charitable Trust called The Koanga Institute.

The purpose of Koanga Institute is to:

• Establish and maintain a collection of New Zealand Heirloom plants (along with records of their history and culture) to ensure their survival and availability for future generations both as a resource for cultivation and genetic diversity.
• Promote the collection as Taonga.
• Establish and maintain an educational resource and research centre where people can learn to garden with heirloom plants.

We are the only organisation in New Zealand, specifically collecting our heritage garden plants, maintaining those collections and making them available for the gardeners of today and tomorrow. We’re very proud of all that we’ve achieved over the past 25 years. We have an enormous job in front of us, we have a very special team of staff here however how much we can achieve in the next 25 years will largely depend upon how much support we get from all of you. This thing is way bigger than us.

If you feel you’d like to support the work we’re doing, the following list of suggestions may help:

• Become a member
• Make a donation
• Send us any special plant material that you may know of out there.
• Purchase from any of the businesses we have relationships with and you are supporting our work. We have relationships with Koanga Gardens Centre for Sustainable Living (the Kaiwaka shop www.koanga.co.nz); Heritage Farms (who grow a small range of the Institute seed in an organic, small scale, commercial operation and sell them in seed stands around NZ) and Edible Garden who sell our heritage fruit trees as a mail order business around NZ (www.ediblegarden.co.nz). Koanga Gardens Centre for Sustainable Living is supported by Forgotten Fruits Nursery and Edible Garden is supported by TreeLife Nursery, who are all part of our family of ethical businesses. We support all of these businesses  and they in turn support the Institute which makes a huge difference to the work we are able do. In return for using the Koanga brand and our heritage plant material they pay a 3% royalty on their gross income and another 3% on turn over of our plant material. This income, together with our membership fees  is what keeps us afloat and continuing to save our New Zealand heritage food plants, our cultural Toanga.

If there is any other way you think you may be able to support Koanga Institute, please don't hesitate to contact us.

Koanga Institute
RD 2, Maungaturoto, New Zealand
Tel: (09) 4312732, Fax: (09) 4312745

info@koanga.org.nz