After more than a year of planning and rallying to put a community garden in the Golf Rd Reserve, Omanu resident Brian Dey is surprised the space may now also have to make way for a golf tee.

Golf Rd Reserve is an 8240m2 recreation reserve based at 62-64 Golf Rd in Mount Maunganui.

A portion of the reserve has been approved for the relocation of Mount Maunganui Playcentre and in 2021, Tauranga City Council put the call out to the community to enter submissions of how the remainder of the reserve could be used. Brian sprung to action.

Submission and approval

“I put in [a submission] suggesting it would be a very good place for a community garden. I’ve had a lot of involvement in community gardens because I was instrumental in establishing the one at May St Reserve, [Mount Maunganui],” says Brian.

Brian says he and his wife put out 500 flyers to neighbouring residences of the reserve and from the responses received 99 per cent of people said the community garden was a great idea.

In February 2022, Brian says the application for the Omanu Community Gardens was approved by TCC and was endorsed in June 2022. “We thought: ‘Yeah we’ve got it’, so we called a public meeting…and we formed a committee.”

It was then in July 2022 that Brian says council called him to say they’d been approached by Mount Maunganui Golf Club to put a seventh tee in the reserve. “I said: ‘This is a great surprise. This is undermining everything we’ve been talking about’.”

“Working with both parties”

TCC’s manager of strategic planning and partnerships, spaces and places, Ross Hudson says: “Mount Maunganui Golf Club approached Tauranga City Council last year to explore whether there was a way the seventh tee could be relocated to the Golf Rd Reserve to enable the re-orientation of the hole away from neighbouring properties.”

Ross says this was after council had agreed to progress the Omanu Community Garden proposal for the public reserve site. “Since then, we’ve been working with both parties to explore whether both groups can be accommodated on the site.”

Brain says: “They want us to share with golf but it’s not easy because golf want to have a driving off the tee place in the reserve.”

He says Bunning’s has already generously offered 25 garden plots for the proposed garden.

“We know that that will become 50 gardens once the word spreads that this place is operating, so how are we going to operate that if we’ve got a golf tee stuck in the middle of it?…it needs to look to the future.”

The Golf Rd reserve that has been approved for Mount Maunganui Playcentre, Omanu Community Gardens and could now see the Mount Maunganui Golf Club’s seventh tee situated in it too. Photo: John Borren/SunLive.

Keeping within boundaries

In regards to the reorientation of the seventh tee, Brian says the community garden group understands the legal requirements of angling away from houses next to the golf course. “We don’t argue with that, but we say and I say, you can do the angle away from the houses from inside the boundary of the golf course. You don’t have to come into the reserve to do that.”

So what money will be involved between the golf club and council, if the sporting body gains access to the public reserve? “Any arrangement with a commercial entity seeking to use public land would be on a commercial basis,” says Ross.

The Sun approached Mount Maunganui Golf Club asking multiple questions including whether they had explored options within the golf course to reorient the seventh tee and whether they had concerns that a seventh tee in the public reserve would impact the community garden plans.

Mount Maunganui Golf Club’s general manager, Michael Williams says: “The Mount Golf Club is exploring options with the Tauranga City Council in regards to the Golf Rd Public Reserve and we have no further comment to make at this time”.