IT Management Professional | Systems-Driven Gardener | NPO Director
Founder of Evergreen Hideout Agricultural Services
NPO Registration: 2024 / 380375 / 07
Last Updated: 6 November 2026 • Soshanguve, Pretoria👨🌾 About Kutlwano Mokoena
Founder • Grower • Writer • Systems-Driven Gardener
Kutlwano Mokoena is the founder of Evergreen Hideout Agricultural Services, a registered Non-Profit Organisation (NPO 2024/380375/07) based in Soshanguve, Pretoria, South Africa.
His work focuses on practical vegetable growing, soil health, plant problem diagnosis, urban gardening, and documenting what happens when ordinary people work with the resources available to grow food.
Rather than presenting gardening as a perfect or predictable process, Kutlwano shares the successes, failures, experiments, setbacks, and lessons that come from growing food in small urban spaces. His aim is to make practical gardening knowledge understandable and accessible to people who want to produce more of their own food.
🎓 My Childhood and Early Life
I was born in Soshanguve, Pretoria. I grew up as an only child to a mother who worked as a domestic worker and a father who worked as a street vendor, selling fresh flowers from the Multiflora flower market in Marabastad.
Between approximately three and six years old, my father would take me with him to the flower market auctions. After buying stock, we would walk to his selling spot near Eugene Marais Hospital. I watched people buying flowers for family members who were in hospital.
Those early experiences became some of my first memories of plants and the different ways people interact with them. I was surrounded by flowers, people, and the everyday work involved in selling and caring for living things. Looking back, those experiences helped spark a curiosity about what grows, how people care for it, and how plants can bring value into people's lives.
I started school at Gammotla Primary School, where I completed Grades 1 to 3 while staying with my grandparents in North West. Their yard had chickens, pigeons, maize, sweet potatoes, peanuts, and grape vines. This was my first real exposure to growing different things and seeing how food production could form part of everyday household life.
Later, I moved back to my parents in Soshanguve and attended Raikana Primary School for Grades 4 to 6. My parents planted fruit trees in our yard, including guava, peach, mango, and avocado. I gradually became more familiar with planting and caring for things that grew around the home.
During school holidays, I sometimes helped my father at the flower market. I also spent time working outside with my mother's employer's garden worker. Those experiences introduced me to gardening tools, soil, and practical outdoor work long before I considered gardening something I might pursue seriously.
I matriculated in 2015 from Elizabeth Matsemela Secondary School, where my subjects included Physical Science, Life Science, Mathematics, and Geography.
After matriculating, I studied IT Management at Richfield Graduate Institute of Technology and graduated early in 2019. At the time, I expected to build a career in technology. However, circumstances eventually brought me closer to something that had been part of my life since childhood: growing things and understanding the systems that support them.
🌱 Why I Started Gardening
In 2021, I began working on my own small backyard garden. I started with the space I had and the resources I could find. Like many people starting out, I had more questions than answers.
The early years involved plenty of experimentation. I explored different planting methods, homemade fertilisers, soil mixes, and ways of growing vegetables in limited urban spaces. I paid attention to how plants responded, what went wrong, and what could be improved.
I began keeping records of observations, mistakes, and small successes. Over time, I realised that gardening was not simply about putting seeds into soil and waiting for food to grow. It involved understanding relationships between soil, water, sunlight, nutrients, plants, and the surrounding environment.
That way of thinking gradually became central to how I approach gardening today.
🌿 The Beginning of Alkemetic Vegetation Farm
The idea for Alkemetic Vegetation Farm began through a conversation and friendship with Emnes Elliott Baloyi. He had been looking for people to work with on a farming idea and had already approached several people around Soshanguve Block P.
At some point, we connected while walking through a stream in our neighbourhood. We were looking for indigenous herbs, medicinal plants, and edible vegetables such as Amaranthus. During that walk, he introduced the idea of starting a farm.
We began discussing the possibility and decided to pursue the idea together. What started as a conversation during a walk through the neighbourhood gradually became something we wanted to turn into a practical growing project.
That same day, while exploring the area around the stream, we identified a potential working space and decided to call the project Alkemetic Vegetation Farm. The patch had previously been owned by an older gentleman, Ntate Monyeki, who was over 70 years old at the time.
That experience was important because it showed me how an agricultural idea could grow from ordinary conversations, local relationships, and an interest in the plants and resources already present in our surroundings.
The transition from technology into gardening shaped the way I approach agriculture today: observe the system, identify the problem, test a solution, measure the result, and learn from what happens.
🧠 My Approach to Gardening
I believe gardening should be accessible, practical, and guided by observation. My approach is systems-driven, influenced by the way I learned to think about problems during my IT Management studies.
In technology, a problem is rarely solved effectively by looking at one symptom without understanding the system behind it. I apply a similar way of thinking to gardening.
When a plant struggles, I try to look beyond the visible symptoms. I consider the soil, watering practices, sunlight, nutrients, weather, plant development, and other conditions that may contribute to the problem.
My gardening interests include soil health, composting, homemade fertilisers, companion planting, natural pest management, vegetable production, and small-space growing. These are areas I continue to explore through practical work and observation.
I write and document what I do because I want other people to be able to understand the process, follow the steps, and learn from both the results and the mistakes.
I do not believe that every gardening method works in every environment. Conditions differ, and what works in one garden may need adjustment in another. Sharing those differences is part of making gardening information more useful.
📍 Evergreen Hideout Agricultural Services
Evergreen Hideout Agricultural Services is a registered Non-Profit Organisation (NPO 2024/380375/07) based in Soshanguve, Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa.
The initiative brings together practical gardening, soil improvement, urban food production, and an interest in community food security.
The website exists to share gardening knowledge and practical lessons from small urban growing spaces. Through articles, tutorials, and observations, I aim to help people understand how to grow vegetables, manage common garden challenges, and make better use of the resources available to them.
Evergreen Hideout is also a way of documenting the learning process. The intention is not to present gardening as something that is always easy, but to show the thinking, experimentation, and persistence that go into growing food.
📞 Contact
For questions about Evergreen Hideout, gardening articles, collaborations, or the organisation, you can use the contact details below.
Organisation: Evergreen Hideout Agricultural Services (NPO)
Founder: Kutlwano Mokoena
Registration No: 2024 / 380375 / 07
Email: evergreenhideout@gmail.com
Phone / WhatsApp: 067 104 4675
Location: Soshanguve, Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa
Soshanguve, Pretoria, South Africa
Growing Knowledge. Growing Food.