Special events

Whau River Catchment

Buddhist Action Month: community service tree planting project

The morning’s work involves laying out 1500 trees for when a planting team arrives later in the day. We’ll be supervised by Sandy of the Whau River Catchment Trust.

We’ll meet at 7.15am at the far end of Charann Place, Avondale (next to no. 14) on Saturday 11 June at 7.15am

Sandy will start with a health and safety briefing as the site is partly on private ground and there was a slip two years ago which means there are particular hazards at this site that we’ll need to be aware of.

We may be in time to help unload the truck with the plants when they arrive at first light. The plants stay in groups of species to make sure of a good mix across the site. This planting is a fairly simple one with nurse crop species which all have the same requirements, so for the most part we just need to be sure that we don’t, for example, put all the cabbage trees at one end of the site but rather spread them evenly across the site. We’ll each pick up as many trees as we can comfortably walk with and lay them out 1m apart across the planting site to give full coverage. The plants will be in 1litre hard pots and will be about knee high.

Wear stout footwear. Walking boots are best but trainers with a decent grip should be ok. Definitely no open toed footwear. We can keep some people on easier ground if they are comfier there as there are flatter bits that need to be laid out. Sandy will provide gloves and there’ll be a first aid kit and first aider on site.

We’ll be helping with planting the Kurt Brehmer Walkway which is a 1.5km long walkway which hugs the Whau River. The Whau River Catchment Trust been working on this walkway for some years. Thousands of trees were put in last year with Avondale Intermediate School and other local groups, but this particular bit couldn’t be done for a couple of years due to the slip. The latest Geotech report determined that we could work on it now. The planting will help stabilise the ground.

We’ll be planting a lot of cabbage trees as well as manuka and other species that Landcare recommends for stabilisation purposes. There is a midden fairly immediately below where we will be working so the area must have seen at least a temporary settlement of Te Kawerau people. In the short term the plants will provide food and habitat for native birds such as tui, riroriro and kotare. In the longer term it will hopefully attract species such as kereru to the area; these have been missing for decades. The walkway is also home to special species such as ongaonga, nativ nettle and native jasmine.

Please contact us to let us know you are coming

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