Inspired By
Alpine Allotments
by Sam Peacocke
Sam Peacocke is a filmmaker who lives and works in Waitakere, New Zealand. On a recent road trip he encountered the Queenstown Harvest Community Gardens.
“The road from Arrowtown to Queenstown winds its way along the bottom of a valley enclosed by the dramatic, verticality of the Southern Alps on all sides. The last thing one expects to see juxtaposed against Cecil Peak wreathed in boiling clouds is a thriving collection of allotment gardens. It was a blustery evening when I came across this beautiful oasis of vegetable so very much loved by the hands of its community. I guess this is what I find so fascinating about allotment gardens; a multitude of hands co-operating to perform this most basic and beautiful of human tasks; that of creating food by literally growing life out of minerals, gases and solar radiation.”