Ever wondered how people cured what ailed them in the old days? Before pesticides were developed, how did farmers stop bugs and animals eating their crops? Ginny Clayton knows and she has been quietly spreading the organic word in Northland.
Health fanatics could save themselves a fortune in pills with a quick visit to Ginny.
"To me that's the biggest plus being in this business," Ginny says. "I've been plodding away with their herbs and tried and true veges for so many years. It's so nice now to have so many people actually asking for them."
In the 1970s Ginny was an organic market garden pioneer in Maungakaramea, south of Whangarei - but she wanted to take it further.
"I was so amazed at how the herbs worked with bio-dynamics and I thought there's a lot more to this," Ginny recalls. "So that was where it all started over 20 years ago."
Plamers Garden Centre in Whangarei has benefited for 10 of those years, selling her herbs and heirloom veges.
When re-stocking, Ginny was often surrounded by curious gardeners and that got Palmers thinking.
We're in discussions with Ginny to hold courses here in the store and small gathering on a Saturday morning after the local farmers market," Palmers' Damian Luiten revealed.
Ginny is trying to keep Grandma's knowledge alive and is one of a handful of people in New Zealand saving heirloom veges - old varieties whose nutritional worth may have been weakened over the years.
"If we don't keep them going we're going to lose them," Ginny warns. "There's constant hybridising going on and each year there's less and less of a gene pool of plants."
As people become more aware of what chemicals their food is exposed to, the demand for Ginny's organic knowledge is growing.
She is hopeful that the old ways will become the new ways once more.