Katikati couple Jizzy and Mike Green are passionate advocates of the sustainable lifestyle.

Living primarily off what they grow in their own garden, utilising a ‘need not want’ mantra and using renewable sources of energy, the pair want to share their story to encourage others to live more sustainably.

“I’ve just done a sustainable workshop in Waihi, and I always say: ‘The greatest potential you have to be sustainable is to grow’ It doesn’t matter if you have only a 3m2 garden, you can grow vertically, you can start with purchasing an old kiwifruit bin and you can grow in it,” says Jizzy.

“We put in 16 solar panels five or six years ago, we were already grid tied then…during the day we use what we are generating, what we don’t use goes back into the grid.

“During the summer months our power bills are $10-12.”

After 15 years at the property, their self-proclaimed ‘haphazard’ mature garden provides most of their food during summer months, with more than 60 trees and plentiful vege beds on 950m2, the garden feels like a place anyone could call home.

“Wherever we’ve been I’ve always put in extensive gardens, but we’ve never stayed long enough to reap the benefits…so this is the longest we’ve been in one space,” says Jizzy.

“In the warmer months 70-80 per cent of what we eat we grow, in winter months it is a lot less. However we’re still eating from our summer garden because we produce so much food in the warmer months that we fill our pantry with preserves. And we have a decent-size freezer and use the dehydrator,” says Jizzy.

Mike and Jizzy live sustainably in all aspects of their life, having a large, three-bin composting system, solar power and recycling.

Jizzy also helped to found ‘Boomerang Bags’ in Katikati, where a group of volunteers create recyclable shopping bags from donated material. The bags are stationed at locations around the town and free to the public to use.

“We’re very passionate about sustainable living; if we need something we ascertain whether it is a need or a want. If it’s available in shops for say $300, [we think] ‘let’s see how we can create it ourselves or buy it secondhand’.

Jizzy says we are constantly bombarded by all this commercialism. “It’s as though it’s imposed on you. We get told what we need, but they are actually just wants,” says Jizzy.

Their property is surrounded by fruit trees, a decision that was made to increase privacy in their suburban home.

“We didn’t know about permaculture when we first started out but after I did a year’s course in permaculture and we saw how everything except the garden shed fitted into the permaculture design structure,” says Jizzy.

“We’d like to do it all over again on a smaller scale, and to focus on being even more efficient!”

Jizzy also runs workshops on ‘Saving Sea Turtles one T.Shirt at a Time’ and ‘Frugal is the new Wealth’ around the Bay of Plenty.