Mobilising our rural community to tackle our biggest environmental challenges

Landscape architect Dan Cameron with Swannanoa farmers Rosemary and Bryan Whyte. Image courtesy of Tony Benny.

Landscape architecture and farming are not often two topics that get paired together. Several years ago, when I first began working in the industry, this was certainly the question I was asking myself - exactly how could a landscape architect serve farmers and the wider primary sector in Aotearoa?

Immediately it became obvious that there was an opportunity to play a key role in tackling some of the most critical environmental issues facing our nation, such as reversing the decline in indigenous biodiversity, enhancing natural freshwater habitats, enriching Mahinga Kai values to strengthen cultural ties to the land and addressing climate change.

One thing that is particularly striking whenever we talk about issues such as these is the sheer effort required to make any meaningful impact on them. Efforts led by charitable organisations, government agencies, community groups and inspired landowners are all a step in the right direction, however in the context of the wider issue they are often disconnected and lack the scale that is really needed.

The Waimakariri District, just to the north of Christchurch, is characterised by the type of farmed landscape that dominates the Canterbury Plains; intensive farming (land use that is highly productive relative to the area required) dominates the landscape between the Ashley/Rakahūri and Waimakariri rivers and from the shoreline at Waikuku, all the way to the Oxford foothills - approximately 130,000 hectares in total.

An overview of Waimakariri Irrigation Limited’s (WIL’s) raceway which provides irrigation water to approximately 200 farmers. Photo courtesy of Tony Benny.

Roughly a third of this Stewart Island-sized chunk of the South Island is home to around 200 farmers who irrigate their land with water from the Waimakariri Irrigation Limited (WIL) scheme.

When I received an opportunity to work with this rural community, I saw the potential to mobilise a vast network of landowners occupying roughly 40,000 hectares - that’s about 20% of the entire District, and about 5% of the wider Canterbury Plains - to take individual action with collective impact.

At this scale, real change is possible. The key to this is understanding that no agency or group on their own - government or otherwise - can ever achieve this alone, and the key is to mobilise and enable people. In this case, despite what many believe to the contrary, the most willing and able people were farmers, and two of these farmers were Brian and Rosemary Whyte of Swannanoa.

Landscape planting plan for Brian and Rosemary Whyte - courtesy of Dan Cameron

Brian and Rosemary have been farming at their property Marawiti for around 30 years. Their philosophy is shared by most landowning farmers across Aotearoa - leave the land in a better condition than you found it.

The couple are part of a group of farmers within a sub-catchment of the lower Waimakariri known as the Burgess Stream - a small rural waterway that many had previously thought to be a drain with no natural significance.

After mapping much of the farmland surrounding the stream and identifying its source on one of the upstream farms, work began with the Whyte’s to look at how we could take the next step from looking at their property’s master plan to what farmers enjoy the most: getting it done.

It was with their commitment to the cause that proved it was possible to enable farmers to cost-effectively grow their own native plants on-farm, and that by doing this we were not only getting trees in the ground but also giving ownership of the cause to the landowners themselves. This enabled them to become increasingly engaged in the wider cause throughout the time required to grow the seedlings, but more importantly to share their story in a way that would encourage others around them to take action as well. 

This is the power of a landscape architects’ approach in the primary sector. It’s not just about designing for mutual human and environmental benefit, but the ability to inspire and engage stakeholders to a cause with visual master planning techniques. Regardless of who they are, people respond better to a visual layout of an overall strategy than they do to a technical report that takes time to digest. Although a well-worn mantra, ultimately the success of a cause lies with the people and therefore our ability as professionals to arm them with the tools, knowledge and support they need to ultimately say they did it themselves and be recognised as leaders in caring for our land and environment.

Article provided by Dan Cameron of Terracentric.