Hi everyone I apologise to Donald, Miriam, Marianne and anyone else, if I offended them.  This was never my intention and I sincerely appreciate the huge efforts of the garden group. My question was one of process, especially in light of the document we just accepted into the membership agreement about how working groups present proposals.

I have had a brief conversation with Donald and Miriam and a longer one with Min. I believe the underlying problem is one of different working groups following different processes of consultation with the rest of the community. Paraphrasing Min (and please correct me if I get this wrong Min) "The garden working group have talked at great length about how to organize the garden and what to grow and issued invitations to the community members to attend meetings to discuss these ideas or to talk to individual garden group members about the garden and give suggestions. It was assumed by the garden group that if community members did not attend these garden group meetings then they were not interested." Other working groups have come to the general meetings and presented ideas, options and proposals. Questions are asked, sometimes the community doesn't agree with what a group is suggesting.  This happened to my working group, the kitchen group. We were worried that we would be short of funds in the final budget and we suggested  at a meeting that we ask the Toiroa community for loans and gifts. The meeting rejected this idea (and the meeting was right, we ended up with the full budget). The kitchen group went away and got on with the job.  The conciliation group had a working document sent back twice by the meeting, they persevered and last night it was passed.  The signage group has had their ideas sent back twice and... (watch this space).

The newly accepted Meeting Guidelines includes a section entitled 'Proposals from Work Groups', which outlines this latter method as the way working groups should present their work to the community. Personally, I am very interested in how the gardens are laid out, in what is being grown for eating or for beauty and all the rest. I appreciate the invitation to the garden group meetings, but since we moved in I have my own working group meetings to attend and the resulting work to do, working bees, decorating, work, busy life etc etc.

I have been expecting to see a proposal from the garden group given to the general meeting, talking about options and ideas that we would discuss and agree on. Proposals of how the vege beds would be used, what is happening with the lawn, where the tiled outside area with shady trees and the pizza oven might be  etc, etc. My question stemmed from my expectation that this would be the process followed.  I believe that, like myself, other community members have very little idea what the garden group is thinking and planning, and we would very much like to know.

SincerelyJeffrey