Rongo Puungao = Energy Healing

RUHIA KING

Waikato-Maniapoto

Kelly grew up in Rotorua and was taught how to garden off the rich whenua from her father and mother, she loves working the whenua and producing kai for her family and foraging for food. Kelly have been immersed in plants her whole life and has inherited the whānau green thumb.

Kelly is a qualified horticulturalist and landscaper with an enthusiasm for New Zealand native plants. Her goal is to help restore the whenua of Aotearoa through our beautiful native plant species with the help of people throughout Aotearoa that would like to become kaitiaki like me.

Kelly will share briefly the journey of finding her ‘purpose’ through her love of nature, growing and cultivating plants since a young age.

She shares how she started her business Kete Ora Plants in April 2020 when Covid19 began. Kelly will share it’s Kaupapa & its goals to heal the whenua of Aotearoa and help restore the whenua for future generations and our wildlife taonga. She will share her ‘all-consuming vision’ of the business, it’s mission and her nationwide search of New Zealanders

becoming kaitiaki of a Kete Ora taonga and a couple of fun things about her Kete Ora plants.

Her presentation will focus on how healing the whenua can help also with emotional and mental healing through Horticulture Therapy. She believes that although it has a

‘modern-day’ title now, Horticultural Therapy was practiced by our tipuna. She shares a personal view and experience on horticulture therapy and how healing ones hauora wairua

(Spiritual Health) and hauora hinengaro (Mental Health) through horticulture, can help re-connect to oneself and nature to help through the everyday stresses that affect us mentally and emotionally and how a person today, in 2021, can participate and immerse oneself in Horticulture Therapy from home and in nature.