Trish Allen is a passionate gardener and permaculturist who believes in working with nature, not against. Trish and her late husband, Joe Polaischer, co-founded the iconic, award-winning Rainbow Valley Farm in Matakana in the late 1980s.  

The farm became an education centre and inspired thousands of people over 25 years in sustainable living and demonstrated the principles of permaculture in action.  

Trish has now moved on and established a new eco-home and edible landscape in the village and shares her knowledge by teaching permaculture-related courses, composting and waste minimisation in New Zealand and overseas. She is involved in her local community garden and Greenswap.

During the first lockdown, as the Greenswap couldn't go ahead, Trish ended up with 'boxes and boxes and boxes worth of fruit.'

Her first instinct was to start making up boxes of her homegrown harvests to share with neighbours, friends and family. “I’d send out a text or an email. Sometimes people would say they didn’t need it but they would pass it along to someone else who was doing it tough.”

One friend suggested she start weighing the apples, pears, bananas, feijoas, persimmons, grapes, tomatoes and zucchini which she was sharing, so she did. By the time the 2020 restrictions had lifted, she had distributed more than 140kg of fresh food.

When the lockdowns rolled out again in 2021, Allen didn’t have fruit to swap but her vegetable garden was packed with winter crops. “I had masses of broccoli, cauliflower, kale, silverbeet and French sorrel. So I gave out a lot of parcels of those to anyone I knew who needed it.”

Trish is offering another Permaculture workshop from July to December 2022. For more information, check out her socials below https://www.facebook.com/TrishRainbowValley/