Year 2/3 Adopt a Park

On Tuesday afternoon, a group of very enthusiastic Year 2 and 3 'Enviro students' visited William Green Domain for a planting afternoon.

We began with a quick tour of the park, identifying native trees and collecting rubbish.

Despite the changeable weather, which shifted from rain showers to sunshine, we successfully planted over 100 native trees and plants without getting too wet!

Our planting coordinators, Anna and Levi, demonstrated how to dig proper square holes for planting—we even discovered plenty of worms along the way!

With the support of our fantastic parent helpers, the students worked incredibly hard. We planted a variety of native grasses, cabbage trees, and flaxes, ensuring they were firmly in the ground so the pūkeko couldn't pull them out.

Native Tree Planting with "Trees For Survival"

     On Wednesday a group of enthusiastic year 5 / 6 enviro students set off to plant over 800 native trees & plants on a farm in Hunua. 

For the last 9 months we have been watering and nurturing these plants ready for this day. 

We watched a planting video beforehand and some of us had been last year so we knew what to expect. 

Kirsten, from Trees for Survival, did a great job of starting us off planting and making sure the pukeko weren't going to pull the seedlings out! 

It was a sunny but slightly chilly day when we started planting. But with the help of our fabulous parent helpers and even the bus driver we soon had them firmly planted in the ground. 

Together we planted 835 natives! 

We planted: manuka, karamu, mahoe, ti kouka, harakeke and 2 different types of sedge grass. 

Afterwards we enjoyed relaxing on the lawn, playing in the sunshine and collecting 

grapefruit to take back with us. 

Thank you to Maxine and Hamish, the farm owners, for a delicious lunch and for showing us your beautiful horses. 

Planting Natives

 It's tree planting season again! 🍃

The students are getting ready for our BIG planting day coming up 

in a few weeks time by planting in our school native garden. 

We were lucky to receive some FREE native trees to plant: 

- Ake Ake

- Titoki

- Coprosma 

- Pittosporum

With thanks for their wonderful support by donating these trees:

* Paper 4 Trees

* BlueSky Community Trust 

* Te Whangai Trust 

PLANTING UPDATE: 

While we were there we also checked on the native trees we had previously planted. This includes: 

- flax 

- rewarewa

- lancewood

The students were fascinated by the young 'fierce' lancewood trees! 

The young natives are making great progress;  the area is fast becoming a native forest! 

Adopt a Park #4

 This week we had our final trip to our adopted park - William Green Domain. 

The weather was not looking the best but we were determined to get a final visit in for the year. 

Focus: HOW DO WE KNOW WE'RE MAKING A DIFFERENCE? 

We want to start measuring the positive impact we are making on this space.  

We can do this by counting the amount of trees we have planted and the amount of rubbish we collect. 

We looked at the native trees we planted earlier in the year and saw they were quite smothered by weeds. We tried to squash down the weeds then put some dried grass as mulch round the base in a doughnut shape.  We counted about 7 cabbage trees and 8 flax in the first section (up to the big tree). 

After we had done that we did a quick "10 minute rubbish challenge" to see how much rubbish we could pick up.

Back at school (after we had dried off and had Milo to warm up!) we sorted, weighed and counted all the rubbish.  

We collected: 177 pieces of rubbish weighing 4.23kg. 

we sorted the rubbish out into piles to see what we had found... 

Lots of plastic bottles / hard plastic ...

122 pieces of soft plastic

bottle lids

and lots of other takeaway cups

Going forward we will think about how we can reduce the amount of these items in our environment. 

Native tree planting

 Today we planted 14 native trees in our native garden area. 

THANK YOU to Howick Local Board 

for donating these trees to us. 

We planted 6 x karo which we added to our 'native tree line'.

We planted 5 mako trees (wineberry) by the second entrance and 3 ribbon wood trees (mānatu) . 

The girls named the ribbonwood trees - Ronnie, Rosie and Rizzy!