Mitchell’s Plain home gardeners were honoured for their green-fingered efforts, at the Soil for Life Pat Featherstone Awards, in Constantia on Friday June 2.
Tony Gain, from Beacon Valley, won the award for “best new home gardener of the year”; Shaun Samuels, of Woodlands, received the “shining light” award (“Gardening for food,” Plainsman August 24, 2022) and Pastor James Lewis, of Strandfontein, was the runner up; Fareda Abrahams, of Westridge, received the “green hero” award (“Praise for Mitchell’s Plain’s food gardeners,” December 4, 2019); and Denise Hendricks, of Portland, was runner-up for the “best home gardener overall” award.
Soil for Life is a non-profit organisation that helps and teaches people to grow healthy, organic, food using simple, low-cost, environmentally-friendly methods.
Mr Gain said the most satisfying sound was the crunch when cutting into a “crisp fresh green pepper” from his garden.
“I mainly joined the course out of curiosity because I already had a garden, but I enjoyed sharing with the participants and would walk across Mitchell’s Plain to get to my fellow gardeners’ homes,” he said.
Sandi Fortune, Soil For Life home gardens programme coordinator, said they were changing the world “One garden and one person at a time”.
Participants completed a 12-week programme, which included step-by-step tuition, home visits and resources to grow their own food from the beginning of 2019 to the end of last year. They were also awarded for being able to maintain their gardens and sharing their information and experience.
“You can barter, sell and share by giving your excess produce to a neighbour or soup kitchen,” said Ms Fortune.
This was Soil for Life’s first awards ceremony since the national Covid-19 lockdown, during which the founder of the organisation, Pat Featherstone, died. The awards are now named in her honour.
Other gardeners who received awards came from Delft, Lavender Hill, Retreat and Steenberg. They had attended weekly gardening tuition programmes in their communities.
