PONSONBY PARK

Ponsonby Park – November Update

Election day, Saturday 17 October arrived fine and clear. Good for voter turnout and equally good for our latest Community-Led Design (CLD) event.

As the start of work on Ponsonby Park has been temporarily delayed due to budgetary constraints caused by Covid-19, we decided to have an on-site engagement with the community. This was to update people and reassure them that Ponsonby Park will progress soon.

It was a great day and an enjoyable opportunity to re-engage with our ongoing and enduring community supporters.

The main question most people wanted answered was “when will it happen?”

Happily, we were able to reassure people that Ponsonby Park, the new civic space at 254 Ponsonby Road, is still the Waitemata Local Board’s ‘One Local Initiative’ project, and that the Waitemata Local Board has “confirmed that proceeds from the sale of a commercial building at 200 Victoria Street go to fund the Ponsonby Park project at 254 Ponsonby Road and urged [the Governing Body] that that project only be delayed by a year.”

We are very appreciative of the Waitemata Local Board’s ongoing support and advocacy work for Ponsonby Park on behalf of our community, as well as visitors from wider Auckland and beyond.

Our event ran from 10am - 1.30pm. We tempted people with delicious Allpress biscotti – chocolate biscuits and gluten free pistachio (yum!). And we handed out flyers with an update of the work our CLD group has been doing to progress Ponsonby Park this year.

Additionally we completed some ‘springtime maintenance’ by replanted our wine barrels that sit in front of our CLD noticeboard, as well as the corner garden. Nice.

We also let people know that we are hoping to reconnect with our ‘Valentine’s Day people’ (see the image below). The very first event our CLD group held was on 14th February 2016, Valentine’s Day. We wrote this up for the Ponsonby News and published the photo below of our young supporters. We’d like to reconnect with them again, to see what they’re up to all these years later.

So, if this is you, or someone you know, please have them contact us via our webpage www.254ponsonbyrd.org.nz/contact.

Or send a message via the Facebook page ‘Ponsonby Park’. And of course, you can keep up to date by checking both of these digital sites out for further information.

Ponsonby Park, it’s going to be brilliant - bring it on! (JENNIFER WARD)  PN

www.254ponsonbyrd.org.nz

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HELENE RAVLICH: LOCAL FASHION - LEARN TO LOVE LINEN

All hail, linen – especially when the summer months roll around and Auckland gets rather hot, and inevitably sticky. It really is the perfect fabric for keeping cool, and thankfully it’s present in almost every summer collection by our favourite local designers.

Did you know that linen was so precious to ancient Egyptians that they actually used the fabric as currency? The effortless textile has been reimagined throughout the centuries and eventually made its way into the heart of the modern-day fashion lover. But the cool factor of this lightweight fashion find goes beyond sporting just the perfect linen pant. Universally flattering and multifaceted in its design, linen can be worn in a myriad of ways, giving an option for every occasion as we head towards the end of the year.

The soft, breathable, centuries-old fabric was once reserved for home furnishings and bed sheets. But by the 1990s, it had become a summer holiday staple, with boyfriend-style shirts thrown over swimwear poolside and tied in knots above midriffs with the perfect pair of jeans - almost ‘Talented Mr Ripley’-style.

Mina Gwyn Skirt Wixii’s Olympia dress

But the appeal is not purely aesthetic. Linen is made from the flax plant and is therefore highly sustainable, making it a rare gem in a fast-fashion culture that we all know is harming the planet. Linen is also one of the most biodegradable fashion fabrics available and as every part of the flax plant that linen is made from can be used, nothing is wasted. Flax is also an incredibly resilient plant and can grow in poor soil with far less water consumption than cotton. In fact – the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation state that flax uses 13 times less pesticide than potatoes, but is only approximately one per cent of the world’s apparel fibre consumption. I think we could all agree that’s it’s a good time to change that!

The Wixii label headed by mother daughter duo Georgia and Shelley Hembrow is synonymous with linen, using it way before many other local designers made the textile a key part of their collections. Their Ponsonby Central boutique is an absolute treasure trove of gorgeous pieces, both with their own label and a carefully curated rack of vintage. Georgia says: “linen is one of our favourite fabrics to use it has so many benefits. It is thirty times stronger than cotton and takes less water to produce, making it truly one of nature’s best raw materials.” She adds that it’s good for the skin and the planet, and it’s pretty easy to spot something you’ll love in linen within minutes of walking through Wixii’s doors. www.wixii.co.nz