Greening Taupō Day - Arbor Day Planting 2024
This year Greening Taupō Day and our Arbor Day planting site was located at the Taupō Golf Club. Arbor Day originated in Nebraska, USA in 1874. Originally prizes were offered for the people that properly planted the most trees. This idea of a day dedicated to tree planting spread to all the states and to many other countries. It has been observed in New Zealand Since 1892 where originally schools and government departments took a day off to plant trees. Since 1977 it has been celebrated on the 5th June to coordinate with World Environment Day with the focus being on planting native trees.
This site is going to be our ‘Arbor Day’ planting for the next two years. Preparation started in April with the removal of lots of weedy trees from what will be our 2025 planting site. Check out the before and after photos below.
As usual site prep was a great team effort. The team at Mynoke delivered truckloads of vermicast. Then 3000 holes were put in the ground by John Hutchinson and Ben and Ants from DOC. Then it was up to our wonderful Wicked Weeders, volunteers from the Golf Club and multiple student groups from local schools to put vermicast in the holes and lay out the plants. The plants were a mix of native trees and grasses kindly donated by Tūaropaki Native Plant Nursery and Trees that Count.
The Taupō Golf Course is located on a piece of land situated between Tauhara and Spa park/ Waikato river on the edge of town. This makes it an ideal location for ‘green or ecological corridors’, which will bring the native birds in from the established areas of native bush, in addition it will beautify the drive in and out of town along this road. This first Arbor Day planting is part of a much larger vision for this area and we are very grateful to Grant Hill, the Taupō Golf Club and Project Birdlife for all of their support. Check out all the planting Project Birdlife has been involved with at the Golf Club in another of our blog posts.
Of course Greening Taupō day is far more than a community planting day. Thanks to the busy team at Kids Greening Taupō it has become a festival of environmental education bringing together community groups and organisations from across the North Island and showcasing the great work they do. This event is proudly supported by a multitude of Taupō businesses, organisations and individuals. To find out more about Greening Taupō day click here.
3000 trees were planted with lots of mulch, there was a lot of learning with fun activities provided by all the stallholders along with some delicious kai. The weather got the memo and it was a clear day, with rain following up a few days later to water in our beautiful trees. Our Wicked Weeders turned out in force and revisited the site to finish off all the mulching. We are looking forward to watching this forest grow and want to thank everyone involved, it really does take a community to plant a forest and we couldn’t do this work without all our supporters, ka pai team and thank you.
