Author Profile: Kutlwano Mokoena
IT Management Professional | Systems-Driven Gardener | NPO Director
Founder of Evergreen Hideout Agricultural Services
NPO Registration: 2024 / 380375 / 07
Last Updated: September 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. His work focuses on practical vegetable growing, soil health, plant problem diagnosis, urban gardening, and documenting what actually happens when ordinary people try to grow food.
Rather than presenting gardening as a perfect or predictable process, Kutlwano documents the successes, failures, experiments, setbacks, and lessons that come from growing food in real Highveld conditions.
🎓 My Childhood & Early Life
I was born in Soshanguve, Pretoria. I grew up as an only child to a domestic worker mother and a street vendor father who sold fresh flowers from the Multiflora flower market in Marabastad.
As a toddler (around 3–6 years old), my father would take me to the auction at the market. After buying stock we would walk to the selling spot near Eugene Marais Hospital. I would watch people buy flowers for sick family members in the hospital. Those early memories sparked a quiet curiosity about what grows, how people care for it, and the small acts of tending that make life better.
I started school at Gammotla Primary School (Grades 1–3) while staying with my grandparents in North West. Their yard had chickens, pigeons, maize, sweet potatoes, peanuts, and grape vines — my first real exposure to growing things by hand. Later I moved back to my parents in Soshanguve (Grades 4–6 at Raikana Primary School). My parents planted fruit trees (guava, peach, mango, avocado) in the yard, and I began learning how to plant. When school closed, I would help my father at the flower market and sometimes work outside with my mother’s employer’s garden worker — learning the feel of tools and soil long before I ever thought of it as a career.
I matriculated in 2015 from Elizabeth Matsemela Secondary School (subjects: Physical Science, Life Science, Mathematics, and Geography). After that I studied IT Management at Richfield Graduate Institute of Technology and graduated early in 2019. For a while the plan was to build a career in technology, but circumstances eventually brought me back to what I had always loved — growing food and helping others do the same.
🌱 Why I Started Gardening
In 2021 I began working on my own small backyard garden. I started with whatever space I had and whatever resources I could find. The first years were full of experiments — different planting methods, homemade fertilisers, soil mixes, and watching what actually worked in our local Highveld conditions. I kept a record of every observation, every mistake, and every small success.
The idea for Alkemetic Vegetation Farm began with my friend Emnes Elliott Baloyi, he was going around looking for people to work with, some point ended up exhausting every single people around soshanguve block p that was close to him, he then linked up with me when we were walking inside our neighborhood stream looking for indigenous herbs, medicine and also vegetables like Amaranthus, he brought the idea of having a farm to me then we decided we were gonna do it, at the same day while working in the stream of water we ended up finding a working space then decided to give it a name Alkemetic Vegetation Farm, the patch was formerly owned by an old man 70+ in age (Ntate Monyeki).
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 based on real observation. My methods are systems-driven — the same way I once approached IT problems. I focus on healthy soil, companion planting, natural pest management, and small-space growing because that is what works in our conditions with limited resources.
I write and document what I actually do so anyone can follow the process from zero.
📍 Evergreen Hideout Agricultural Services
Evergreen Hideout is a registered NPO (2024/380375/07) that brings together practical gardening, soil regeneration, and community food security. The website exists to share real, hands-on lessons from Soshanguve and the Highveld so others can grow their own food successfully.
📞 Contact
Organisation: Evergreen Hideout Agricultural Services (NPO)
Registration No: 2024 / 380375 / 07
Email: evergreenhideout@gmail.com
Phone / WhatsApp: 067 104 4675
Location: Soshanguve, Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa
Growing food. Diagnosing problems. Sharing what works. Building practical food-security knowledge.
NPO Registration: 2024 / 380375 / 07
📍 Soshanguve, Pretoria, South Africa
© 2026 Evergreen Hideout. Systems-driven gardening for a resilient South Africa.