Students Kendall (New York) and Cookie (California) and left, their supervisor Jess (North Carolina) |
PLANTING REPORT - 2006
Dear Friends of Bream Head,
You wonderful people! Forty of you turned up on 11 June and a further seventeen on 18 June to help with the planting of over three and a half thousand young trees. Your presence and efforts are really appreciated and we on the Restoration Committee and the Trust feel greatly encouraged by you interest and involvement. I appreciate that when we advertise our planting days there are many of you who would like to be but, for various reasons, can’t be there; but to those of you who could and did - thank you very much!
A mixture of mostly young manuka with a few pohutukawa, ti kouka (cabbage tree), mapou and kowhai were planted. The seed for these had been collected from Busby Head and Woolshed Bay, some of it in 2004, and mostly raised by the Kerikeri Shadehouse (a Doc run nursery for conservation projects - Rod Brown, 424 Kerikeri Road, Kerikeri, Phone 09 407 4294, email . Twelve of the kowhai came from seed planted by Sir Edmund Hillary during his visit in 2004. Alter-natives - Waipu (Ian Fox, 571 Ormiston Road RD 2 Waipu, Phone 09 432 1333) donated 30 mapou and ti kouka reared from seed collected at Waipu.
In preparation for the planting day the seedlings were transported to the Urquhart Bay car park and then by dinghy and inflatable to the planting sites just beyond Woolshed Bay. James Robinson and Joan Maingay gave informative talks about the history of the gun emplacements.
Planting will continue in 2007 and 2008 and seed and seedlings are already being prepared. The ground will be sprayed to kill the kikuyu grass and give the seedlings a head start. Manuka is chosen and planted at 1 metre spacings so that it will quickly form a canopy and prevent the kikuyu from becoming re-established. With the suppression of the kikuyu and the shelter of the manuka a natural situation is created which will allow a forest to grow in its own time and with its own design.
Very best wishes
David Monro
P.S. The photo above shows three young American women at Smugglers Bay on 6 July releasing smothered seedlings from the grip of kikuyu grass.
They are part of a group visiting N.Z. to have fun and do some community support work. They did some useful tasks for us and enjoyed walking the Smugglers’ Bay circuit.
Here’s what some of the group had to say about themselves:
“We are Global workers, a group of teenagers from America (including one from France) who have decided to spend a month of our summer doing community service and adventure travel throughout New Zealand and Fiji. We have spent the past week at Aroha Island near Kerikeri working on the island’s ecological reserve. We are currently staying at Whangarei Heads and doing work on local environmental projects.
Today we worked with Mr David Monro and Mr Colin Edwards at the Bream Head Scenic Reserve releasing young planted trees from kikuyu grass and picking up waste plastic from beaches. After listening to an intriguing introduction by David all of us were very motivated to help the New Zealand community by giving new life to the amazing local nature. We discovered the whole countryside through an exciting and challenging hike with incredible landscape and ocean views.
Today’s adventure was very inspiring, and we hope to have many more like it in our remaining days in New Zealand and Fiji.
Adam, Rachel, and Zelie.
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