Special day for planting
A mission to create corridors of native plants from the Tararua Range to the Manawatu¯ River has chalked up a milestone, but volunteers still have a lot of work to do.
Nearly 100 people were at the Lower Titoki Reserve yesterday to take part in a Green Corridors tree planting day.
The day was a significant one, as it marked the 10,000th tree being planted in the reserve.
Courtney Rudman from Starter Plants, which grew all the trees used in the planting, said the annual winter planting in the reserve, with plants supplied by Ricoh, had been going for eight years. In that time they had managed to plant from Cashmere Drive to Cliff Rd, an area about 2 kilometres long, she said.
‘‘Because we’ve filled the whole area, we’re now coming back to fill in spaces.’’
Faster-growing trees were planted on the first run, which would provide cover for the slowgrowing plants now going in, she said.
‘‘The early planting would only last for 15 or 20 years, but they act as good shelter.’’
The trees going in yesterday included to¯ tara and mataı¯, while kawakawa was also put into some spaces to provide variety.
Although there had been good progress in the Lower Titoki Reserve, Rudman said there was still lots of work to get done if they wanted to connect all the different corridors together.
All the plants used in the corridor project were grown from seeds collected locally.
Viv Mcglynn, who helped collect the seeds, said doing that ensured the unique genetic makeup of local trees continued into the future.
‘‘If you’re going to restore local biodiversity, you would not plant plants from Australia or South Africa. But you also wouldn’t plant kauri in Manawatu¯ , because it grows up north.’’
Figuring out where to get seeds involved thinking about how far a bird would distribute seeds after feeding, and also how natural pollination would work, she said. ‘‘You do what you can with the knowledge you have.’’