Students share in Coast Care glory
Cheers and load clapping echoed around Castlecliff School hall at a recent Friday assembly.
The school has some very parochial students, who were delighted to celebrate that their efforts had helped Progress Castlecliff Coast Care win a national award.
Coast Care co-ordinator, Graham Pearson took the Coastal Restoration Trust of New Zealand’s best restoration project 2020 award along to assembly to acknowledge the help the students had given to the project for many years.
He recalled last year that the students and helpers had got drenched, in a heavy shower, while working hard to plant up the bank by the skate park.
Started by Ted Frost in 2007, the Coast Care project has become strongly community orientated, involving local schools, community groups and a regular band of helpers.
Graham says it was this strong community participation that had helped win the award at the national conference, held in Invercargill in March. He is taking the trophy, which depicts pingao runners curling up from the sand, along to contributing groups.
This task has been delayed, for the trophy spent lockdown in Petone.
The Coast Care group has about 400 dune plants supplied by Whanganui District Council and Parnell’s Nursery ready for planting out this winter, plus 400 spinifex and 300 pingao sand binder plants grown by Coastlands nursery from seed collected by Coast Care volunteers from plants on the Castlecliff beach.
It was this strong community participation that had helped win Graham Pearson
■ Anyone keen to help should watch the what’s on pages, for dates of planting days in the next three months.