Food for Kaitangata is grown by residents of Kaitangata.
At the top of Old Church Rd, on land owned by the Clutha District Council below the old hospital site, a group of volunteers took the first steps towards greater self-sufficiency, planting out the town's community garden with 60kg of seed potatoes, 100 strawberry plants, lettuces, corn, cauliflower, cabbages, broccoli, carrots and onions.
''We've got heaps of variety,'' Rebecca Heperi, of the Templeview Charitable Trust, said.
Miss Heperi has spearheaded the project, but said that she expected the community would now manage the garden.
The trust has so far taken the lead, with some direction coming from the Mataura Community Garden, which this year overplanted to provide plants for the Kaitangata project to help get it started.
The 25m by 20m garden, to be planted today by City Impact Church members and other volunteers, would be a chance to help the community learn how they could keep their daily living costs down, Miss Heperi said.
''There will be a slight cost [for the produce], but it certainly won't cost as much as anywhere else,'' she said.
''We want this to be more than a community garden; we want this to be a hub of education, where people can come and feel safe and congregate - leave their problems outside the door and share their knowledge, share their resourcefulness.''
After establishing the first vegetable plot, working bees would be held to build a retaining wall and a fence.
All the resources have been donated by the community.
''Even though it's been initiated by us, it's there for them,'' she said.
Miss Heperi's vision is to expand the garden to provide ''meals on wheels'' for the community.
