Another successful year extending the greenway!
This year Te Ara Kākāriki landowners, community, corporate and student volunteers and our own kaimahi field team planted almost 24,000 ecosourced seedlings at 32 individual sites, 13 of which were new greendots, helping to connect the Canterbury Foothills with Te Waihora Lake Ellesmere and the sea.
In collaboration with Enviroschools Canterbury, 14 Selwyn Kura (schools) were able to take part in our Kids Discovery Plantout (KDP) programme involving 924 ākonga (students). In total they planted an incredible 4,469 native seedlings!
You can check out some completed school plantings while you stroll through the Lincoln Wetlands, or by visiting Te Pae o Ahuriri or the Willows Reserve in West Melton.
Throughout spring, 430 volunteers joined us to plant over 8,000 native plants at our four weekend community planting days and four staff planting days. They planted at Te Motu O Huritini (in Ahuriri Reserve) Taitapu, Leeston, West Melton, Hororata, Springfield and Darfield. Feedback from our volunteer surveys showed that volunteers enjoy learning how to plant seedlings properly, they learned a lot about local habitat and biodiversity and they enjoyed being around other people and visiting different parts of the region. Of course there was lots of great feedback on the delicious lunches too!
This year we ran staff planting events for Corde who planted 800 native plants in Springfield and Colliers Commercial Real Estate who planted 488 native plants in Hororata. Lincoln Agritech and Adventure South also took part in afternoon planting days, planting over 600 seedlings between them at a Springston greendot in August.
Corporate planting events are an opportunity for employees to have a different kind of working day, to get out of the office and help with restoring native biodiversity in Canterbury in a fun and relaxed atmosphere. Corporate planting events may also help businesses advance their sustainability and staff health and well-being aspirations. If your business would like to know more about our Corporate day planting events, please contact our coordinator Letitia (Le*********@ka******.nz).
Our kaimahi field team have also been very busy this year, planting over 9,000 ecosourced seedlings at a variety of sites, firstly through the Jobs for Nature projects then through our own Professional Services. Besides planting they’ve also been a great support to our coordinators at planting days, carried out some great predator control work and been busy keeping the weeds at bay at many native planting sites.
Te Ara Kākāriki are very grateful for all our planters, dedicating their time and enthusiasm to planting natives, we also acknowledge the landowners, several who went on to plant even more seedlings with their friends and families and will be busy weeding their greendots for the next few years. We also thank our funders and volunteer trustees, who without their support, none of this would be possible. You are all important to the continued growth of the greendot network.