Bring together one group of James Hargest College Year 10-12 Ag&Hort students working towards their planting trees or shrubs Unit Standard 2765, NZ native plants grown at the Southland Community Nursery and Environment Southland’s Waihōpai Planting Programme site and you get over 100 plants added at this restoration planting site. Following the know how session of how to check for a healthy plant and how to plant, it was all hands on to get the plants correctly into the ground so they have the best opportunity to thrive. As we walked back through previous plantings, some maintenance was carried out. Awesome mahi today. This session was followed up by some more planting, this time around the JHC campus, with the students putting their knowledge into action.
It was great to have a group visit the community nursery again, and the weather meant a lovely day for meeting Southland natives. Using senses we smelt, looked at and felt the bark and leaves of tī kōuka, kōwhai, miro, rimu, tōtara, kahikatea, mānuka, broadleaf, lancewood, horopito, kōtukutuku, hebe, harakeke and many more as we wandered around the pond track and through the kahikatea swamp forest. As well as meeting all the native plants there was spotting fungi and heaps of noticing. It was great to see adults and children alike being inspired out in nature. A quick look inside the education centre and some potting up finished the visit.
Volunteer Fridays are becoming busier and busier with 15 people attending last Friday. A range of jobs are being done at the moment from track making, to potting, plant moving, weeding, track clearance, seed sorting and cleaning. Most of the seed collection has finished and the next major projects will be seed sowing and cuttings workshops. These will be done mainly on Friday mornings but if there is interest in specific workshops for particular groups we can hold specific workshops on other days of choice for those groups. Email Chris . Lots of plants are going out to planting projects at the moment – this week a Tramping Club order for the Oreti Totara Dune Forest and the Waihopai James Hargest/ES planting project amongst many others.
Four days of workshops on Plant ID and Weeds were held at the Education Centre from 23-26 May 22. The workshops were arranged by Nelson Marlborough Insitute of Technology (NMIT) through the Department of Conservation - https://www.doc.govt.nz/get-involved/training/field-based-courses/ and involved a range of participants from Te Tapu o Tāne and DOC Biodiversity rangers. The Education Centre venue provided the opportunity for inside and outside learning provided by Becs Gibson from NMIT and DoC’s Lynne Huggins.
I joined the tamariki and whānau at Roslyn Bush Playcentre and worked alongside them as we planted some NZ native plants at their place of learning. We planted broadleaf, red tussock, cabbage tree, Pittosporum and mingimingi. The children carried the plants and the spades to the planting area behind the big tree - what great helpers. I showed them how to dig a hole big enough for the plant to fit in, and how to test that our hole was indeed big enough, and then showed how to take the bag off, put the plant in, replace the soil and stomp to give the plant a new home. The children persisted with the hole digging, and were amazed to see the roots the plants have once the bags were removed. There was great careful stomping around the base of the plants once they were in the ground. All of the tamariki were interested in what was going on at their place and there was great teamwork and helping of each other. Tumeke!
