Planting Paddocks

Community Planting Day a great success!

Working on a Saturday is not always high on my agenda, I have kinda got to a nice work-life balance whereby I'm not expected to put in tons more hours than I'm paid for, my weekends are my own... but today I was asked to put in a little extra time.

On this occasion, I was more than happy to oblige...

Punakaiki and the community surrounding the area, came together in an awesome synergy of interesting people and differing interests, to plant up a large chunk of our first year's planting zone at the Punakaiki Coastal Restoration Project on the old Westland Ilmenite Mining grounds.

Around 30 people from the Coast joined us on the sunny Saturday morning, to mix with our latest crew of volunteers - eight North Americans (plus 1 Canadian-Kiwi team leader, Kristina). The outcome : a fantastic spectacle of kids, young adults, and older adults, sharing cultures, planting plants, and kicking the project off with a fantastic effort on both drier and wetter species throughout the paddock closest to CVNZ's Punakaiki office.

With 1000 plants in the ground by midday, the ISV crew and local community were treated to quite the fantastic smoko spread of home baked muffins, fruit cake, cookies & scones courtesy of ISV's leader Kristina, James' wife Tanya, and a friendly local - Imogen. It was heartily agreed that we should do this more often - the planting as well as the smoko.

The event was attended by the local journo, an interested tourist, and a member of the district council, let alone all the volunteers (from the global community) and was definitely a great success and announcement of presence in the South Island and in the Punakaiki area.

Planting Punakaiki Paddocks Photo Album

Freshly planted paddock