About Greening the Rubble

Greening the Rubble Trust is a community project for Christchurch, NZ, which unites a team of volunteers responding creatively to the extensive damage caused by the earthquakes.

We are creating temporary public parks and gardens on sites of demolished buildings, usually in commercial rather than residential streets. Licence agreements with site owners, modest financial support from these owners and extensive sponsorship of the construction materials and design process, make it possible for our volunteer teams to build and maintain these parks.  Each project features as a post on this site and in addition our Greening the Rubble Facebook page announces volunteer activity and has our story timeline in photos.  A June 2012 Perspective article in the Christchurch Press tells our story.

These sites are in public use only temporarily, until owners are ready to redevelop – which might be from six months to a few years later. A partner organisation called Gap Filler uses these and similar sites as venues for arts events, performances and installations of usually shorter duration, days or weeks.  Sometimes we share space on sites, such as on Kilmore Street Book Exchange and at the outdoor Music Room on Colombo Street, Sydenham.

Key contributors to Greening the Rubble have included willing site owners, and:

members of NZ Institute of Landscape Architects (NZILA),
staff and students at Lincoln University and at Canterbury University including Student Volunteer Army, who have also tackled some similar projects: in our backyard
Christchurch City Council, who are our major grant source
and a national membership charity which currently hosts the project:  Living Streets Aotearoa Inc. (Living Streets is also on Facebook)