Urban Orchards is an interactive online marketplace to buy or sell any fruit, vegetables, herbs  or other fresh produce grown in your garden to local businesses and families. This platform  allows you to create your own online store to facilitate the sales of your produce. We want to  localize horticulture to reduce environmental impacts of storing, shipping and refrigerating  produce grown on the other side of the country or overseas. We recognize that nothing is  better than fresh home-grown food, and that many people have so much that it ends up  rotting on the ground, so we aim to bridge the gap between growers and buyers. Whether it is  the old lemon tree you hardly touch, the feijoa tree that produces so much you can hardly  give it all away, the rosemary bush or bay leave tree you want to keep tidy and make a bit of  money from, your prized super-hot chillies, or the loaded pumpkin vine that you don’t know what to do with. Even exotic things like choko, loquat, Vietnamese mint may have a market.  

Check out this explanation video to know more!

We have 5 key value pillars: Local, Fresh, Clean, Sustainable and Community 

Local 

Our goal is to increase local food security, which is especially important in crisis times where  cities, regions or the country can be temporarily cut off form suppliers. Localising food  production decreases the environmental impacts of what we as humans consume significantly by reducing emissions associated with freight and refrigeration. 

Fresh 

It is very common that the fruit you buy at supermarkets, or even local fruit and vege shops,  were harvested weeks, months or in some cases (like apples) up to 18 months before you buy  it and take it home! We want to make fresh produce (picked today!!!) accessible to everyone 

Clean 

We want to encourage the growth and consumption of spray free, environmentally friendly  produce. This means no pesticides, no inorganic fertilisers, no processing, no big farm  machinery. All home-grown, safe, delicious “organic” food. 

Sustainable 

Fruit and vegetables are grown in mass produced mono-culture orchards across the country.  They are harvested and stored in cool rooms consuming large amounts of energy, then  transported by truck or boat to your city. Meanwhile, huge amounts of fresh produce are  going to waste in your own neighbours’ yards. Let’s bring everything local again and make an  impact.

Community

Not only do we want to increase food security and access to healthy food in communities, but  we want to help create a greater sense of belonging. Traceability is important to us, and we  think its pretty cool that you will know exactly who grew what you are eating, where and how.  For buying produce: know where the produce you are using was grown, how many hands it  has passed through and who grew it. For selling produce: hear back about where your home grown fruit, veges and herbs end up. Knowing that your lemons ended up in the cheesecake  down at your local cafe is pretty special!

By choosing to sign up under the login button.

You will need an account to buy or sell on the marketplace

Apply to become a vendor by registering first.
Then your application will go through an approval process.
You will be notified when you are accepted.

Once you have been approved you will need to create a Stripe account.
Stripe allows a secure payment into your bank account. You can make an account at www.stripe.com
If you don’t have an NZBN you can apply as a sole trader.
Then you can link your Stripe account to your Urban Orchards account in the Dashboard

Now you can list your produce on the marketplace

Make sure you include the unit size (eg 10 grams, 1 kg, 1 bunch etc)
Include your location to allow people in your area to fin you in a distance search
Add photos of your beautiful produce so buyers know what to expect

Once you have an account you can buy produce.
You can search by location on the Marketplace page if you enter your address and set a distance.

The next step is to click “Ask a question” to find out about pickup or delivery times and to make sure the vendor has enough stock available.

Once you have confirmed the sale click Buy now, which will bring up payment details. Using your eftpos card through Stripe you can securely deposit the payment into the vendors account in a cashless contactless transaction

As mentioned in Terms & Conditions, other than providing our site as a venue, we don’t take any part in the sale or purchase of items on our site, nor are we involved with the provision of member services. All transactions and other contact between you and other members is entirely at your risk. Buyers and sellers are expected to do due diligence before any sales, taking into account  profile verification status, customer feedback and common sense on whether the vendor has  any visible fruit trees at the pickup address etc. Urban Orchards can assist in mediating any disagreements but is not liable for refunds. In extreme cases, Urban Orchards may pursue legal action to recover costs. Refunds may be possible through third-party transaction providers (Stripe) if within the terms of their policies. For more information please refer to Terms & Conditions.

You can leave a review on the page of the product you wish to review under the reviews tab.

You will find this option in your orders page under my account.

Urban Orchards will take a 20% commission on all sales which will go towards helping create a better experience for you and other Urban Orchards members and towards community initiatives around NZ. Stripe fees cover the third-party EFTPOS transaction fees which are 30c per transaction plus 2.9%. This allows a cashless and contactless transaction. The Stripe fee will be more noticeable in smaller transactions due to the 30c fee, but will become negligible for larger payments.

Usually 48 hours or two business days.

We work alongside community organizations like Just Zilch and Massey University to offer a way for donations of any extra produce to be distributed around the community.  

If you have any excess produce growing in your garden that you would like donated, please send us a message for contact details of organizations in your local area. 

Palmerston North: 

Just Zilch – deliver your produce to 248 Featherston Street, Palmerston North 4410 Between 1.30pm-6pm Mon-Fri 

Feel free to contact us with any queries, comments or suggestion at  

UrbanOrchardsNZ@gmail.com 

Or contact Nelson directly on 021 084 11382

You can also sign up to our social media to keep up to date and show your support

www.facebook.com/UrbanOrchards/ 

www.instagram.com/urbanorchardsnz/