Gift A Tree Planting Day
Over 400 native trees have been planted in Little River, Canterbury
Over the last few months, we’ve been busy nurturing all the seedlings and preparing the site for trees purchased in our Gift a Tree programme. Now that it’s spring and the ground is a little warmer, we have finally been able to plant them!
WHAT’S GIFT A TREE?
Gift a tree is a service where you can purchase a gift certificate for your chosen number of native trees to be planted. Following your purchase, native tree seedlings are then bought and planted at one of our Forever Forests reforestation projects in New Zealand.
WHERE THESE NATIVE TREES WERE PLANTED
Our current tree-planting site is beside the Christchurch to Little River Rail Trail in Canterbury; you can view the location on Google Maps here. A huge thank you to High Bare Peak, who own the land and are as keen as us to increase biodiversity in the area. We’re all excited to watch this native vegetation grow, and as it’s beside a public pathway, you can watch too!
PREPARING THE SITE
With all the wild weather we had earlier in the year, we had to delay planting until spring. But that didn’t mean work stopped! The site was pretty overgrown and boggy, so we continued work to clear and weed so that the seedlings could take root more easily when planted.
What was planted and when
The site is a long and narrow wetland beside the main highway to Akaroa and next to the Little River Rail Trail - a walking and cycling path. We sourced seeds from a local Banks Peninsula nursery and tailored these native tree species to suit the damper environment of the site; they are:
Pōkākā
Māhoe
Ribbonwood
Cabbage trees
Kōwhai
Whauwhaupaku (Fivefinger)
Kānuka
We spent a couple of days in October planting the above trees with the help of some contractors. Watch the video below to see how we got on.
A FAMILY AFFAIR
Our Co-Founder and Director, David Chandler, took his family to the tree planting site for a weekend to finish planting the last few trees. It may have been a cold day, but they all wore smiles on their faces while learning how to best plant these native trees!
A massive thank you to everyone who purchased trees this year. If you’re after a unique sustainable gift idea or would like to just get another native tree in the ground, head over to our Gift a Tree page.