High maintenance
A couple’s retirement dream grew into a passion project to nurture and protect a Coromandel forest for future generations
WHEN SEARCHING FOR a retirement block in 2000, Linden Moyle viewed a steep sheep farm covered in rank grass and gorse in Coromandel’s Te Mata Valley. It was not love at first sight. But it did have her husband Richard’s prerequisite — a north-facing house site on a hill. A return visit on a clear day revealed a vista to Coromandel Forest Park and a window down to the Firth of Thames. It was then that Linden knew it was where she wanted to be.
Half the land had been fenced and grazed. The rest was a jungle of wilding pines, weeds, and bush growing over steep faces. “We couldn’t see the property,” says Linden. “There was no vantage point. We bought the property for the house site and the bush came with it.”
Neither had experience farming or gardening. They tried running a few sheep, letting the neighbours graze their cattle and offering the land to Unitec horticultural students for project use. “But Unitec wanted us to oversee the project, do soil tests, monitor and report. So I decided to enrol and do the course myself,” Linden says.
Inspired, she started off planting lemonwood and pōhutukawa, neither of which grew naturally in the valley. She learnt to observe what belonged, eventually seedsaving from the existing forest and growing more than 10,000 plants. She focused mainly on local pioneering species: kānuka, putaputaweta, māhoe, karamu and akeake. “It is the logical thing when looking after this sort of land. You let nature do it for you.”
The couple divided the bush into two zones: one they have left to regenerate naturally; and the other they have planted. They noticed that once the pine trees were removed and light was allowed onto the forest floor, woolly nightshade colonised the carpet of needles, which then naturally died and rotted into a humus that nurtured the regeneration of natives.
Simply regrowing the forest was not enough. Linden and Richard felt the regenerating bush on their five hectares should be legally protected to safeguard the habitat corridor and ensure ongoing erosion control. So they approached the Queen Elizabeth II National Trust (QEII) to place a covenant on the forest. “It couldn’t have been easier,” says Richard.
Today, Linden’s morning walk involves checking the five DOC200 traps Thames Coast Kiwi Care has provided for mustelids (stoats, ferrets and rats) and three Timms traps for possums.
The Moyles’ pest eradication efforts are proving effective. In 2021, a survey indicated more than 48 pairs of adult coromandel brown kiwi now reside in the 1000 hectares of the Te Mata Valley and the neighbouring Tapu Valley.
Linden’s work has recreated the bush that once clad the hills, extending the adjoining Coromandel Forest Park into a native corridor. Back when they first bought the property, she said she’d die happy if she established a waisthigh canopy of native plants.
The forest she planted now towers over her. “I am happy and not dead,” Linden says, gazing up at the treetops.
LEARN MORE Read more on how the Moyles combatted wilding pines, cunning magpies and the lengthy QEII process at thisnzlife.co.nz