Caring for place and community on Tiber Street
By Mo Morgan, Eco Church Regional Coordinator
On Tiber Street in Island Bay, there is a long, narrow piece of Council land, about as wide as a road, near the bottom of the valley, opposite the local Catholic school. It’s a paper road, land set aside for a road that was never built. Recently, it has begun to become something more: a place where people from the neighbourhood can come together to care for their local environment, build relationships and grow community.
It started with a local church asking a question: What could Island Bay Presbyterian Church do to care more intentionally for the place where they live? The church had been talking about Eco Church and creation care for some time. Creation care was incorporated into their worship and became part of their conversations, but they were still looking for something tangible to work on.
Island Bay’s minister, Rev Nathan Parry, decided to take some time on study leave to explore what might be possible. He walked the streets around the church, talked to people, visited other churches and prayerfully explored different options. The flooding that affected Island Bay early in 2026 also shaped his thinking. It highlighted not only the vulnerability of the local environment, but the importance of neighbours having ways to support one another.
So Nathan started knocking on doors. The response was encouraging. People were keen to do something together. A planning meeting brought together neighbours, people from the local school, church members and others from the community. Together they began to imagine what could happen on the Tiber Street land. The vision was to create a space that was cared for more intentionally by the local neighbourhood.
There were questions along the way. Would people come and get involved? And in a fairly secular Wellington neighbourhood, how could the church make space for faith in what they were doing in an open but meaningful way?
To get things moving, they decided to invite people to a ‘garden warming’, a simple opportunity to gather, connect and celebrate what was beginning. People came, relationships grew and the church found ways for faith to be present naturally within the project. Together, they planted the trees, with karakia before and after the work.
The floods had highlighted how closely caring for the environment and strengthening the community are connected. For Nathan and the church, an important part of the project is healing – people and creation together. The connections are already bearing fruit. Through Nathan’s door-knocking and relationships in the neighbourhood, one local family has tried out the church’s youth group.
And the church’s thinking about Eco Church has shifted too. Initially, they weren’t sure what ‘being on the eco journey’ looked like for them. But through the Tiber Street project, they have discovered that their role can be much bigger than caring for one particular piece of land themselves. Their long-term vision is to find other people in the community living alongside similar pieces of land and help them care for those places too. The church sees itself as a facilitator, helping people discover what is possible, connecting neighbours with one another, and creating opportunities for communities to care for the places they share.
What is growing on Tiber Street, then, is more than trees. It is an opportunity for a church to use its relationships, presence and resources to help the wider neighbourhood discover new ways of caring for the place they live and call home.
