A regenerative Garden with deep mulching of purpose
What if the world's "saviours" were not tech billionaires taking us to Mars but instead Pods of Solar Punk Grannies and Aunties?
Did you know:
There is something called the Grandmother Hypothesis. It asserts that only 6 species evolved to have menopause. Humans and toothed whales like narwhals (the unicorns of the sea). So what would be the biological point of 40+ years of non-reproductive time?
To save the community, obviously.
In orcas, post-menopausal females are the navigators. When food is scarce, the grandmothers lead the pod to food. The older she is, the more valuable her knowledge. Pods with older matriarchs have significantly higher survival rates, especially in hard years.
Menopause is designed to help the community thrive. That is exactly what Granny Whales Garden is seeking to do. Bring regenerative agriculture skills and project management skills to solving local problems through matriarchal feminine democratic processes.
Vision:
Granny Whales Gardens creates Kai and Compassion Corridors for People and Pollinators
Transforming school fence lines and underutilised spaces across the Wellington Region into living food and flower corridors.
Supported by pods of Solar Punk Grannies and Aunties working in partnership with the rangatahi who will inherit the bounty.
Solar Punk Grannies?
We are Aunties and Grans, hovering somewhere around or past menopause and are feeling our true power kick in. The kids are gone, or going, or should be gone or never where. We are fed up with what is happening in the world, but have not lost hope in the goodness of humans. We have collectively decided to take action in a way that makes sense using space that is underutilised.
What is Solar Punk?
Technology as a Tool, Not a Master
We believe technology should serve people and planet. Solar panels on rooftops. Open-source software. Tools you can actually repair. Tech that empowers communities rather than extracting from them.
Community Over Corporation
Real change happens locally. Tool libraries, community gardens, shared resources, neighbours working together. Solarpunk chooses compassionate cooperation over competition, every time.
Nature as Partner, Not Resource
We take our cues from natural systems rather than fighting them. Biomimicry, regenerative agriculture, rewilding cities. This is how we build something that lasts by design.
Hope and Spite as Fuel
Solarpunk isn't naive. We know that challenges are stacked but we are going to do it any way. In spite of it all. Just to prove we can. To show that love always wins out over fear in the long run.
A Movement, Not a Manual
There is no solarpunk rulebook. It is a way of asking: what would the regenerative version of this look like? It grows, adapts, and belongs to whoever picks it up.
Body Positivity and Food Security? What's the connection?
Every Body is a Treasure is the charitable trust that runs Granny Whales Garden. We are a body-positive trust, and part of this project is about shining a light on matriarchies and the power of menopausal and elder women and our importance to human survival and thriving.
We honour menopause as the biological burning of the shackles of everything that didn't serve us as women up until this point. And we celebrate stepping into our full power and using it for the collective good.
Bodies need food. Bodies are treasures. Food insecurity impacting 1/3 of our population is not on. So we are on it.
The elegance of Granny Whales Garden is that it tackles the following main challenges simultaneously:
- Food Insecurity in 1/3 of people in the region.
- Loneliness epidemic
- Workplace readiness for a regenerative future, not an exploitative one.
- Nature-deficiency disorder in our screen-filtered world.
- Body compassion for menopausal women.
Get amongst it
