Love Taupō Trail Festival Planting Day powered by Supercars
It was a glorious day for the first community planting day of the 2024 season. Where over 150 people came together to plant 1800 native plants and trees as part of the Love Taupō Trail Festival, funded by Supercars.
First community planting day of 2024
The first community planting day of the season is always exciting, this year did not disappoint. Seeing the community come together in the glorious sunshine to transform an area which has recently been devastated by Cyclone Gabrielle was wonderful.
This site was originally an area of exotic forest, predominantly blackwoods which intersected with native plantings on the Honey Trail bike track which were planted by Andrew Hilton. Cyclone Gabrielle wiped out these exotic trees, making the adjacent tracks and trails inaccessible and leaving a big mess and a lot of work. The photos below illustrate the transformation of this site. Big thanks to Andrew Hilton and John Hutchinson for all their efforts in getting this site perfectly prepped.
This planting day was part of a first time collaboration with the inaugural Love Taupō Trail Festival, a 3 day celebration of nature and all things good about being outdoors. So instead of our usual Saturday morning planting, this planting was scheduled for Sunday afternoon. This was awesome as it meant that some of our team got to enjoy the festival fun with night running on Friday evening and rogaining and biking on the Saturday. The Craters trail run was held on Sunday morning but we opted out of this event as we got our morning workout from laying out all the plants, helped of course by our wonderful Wicked Weeders. It was great to see so many participants from the mornings trail run still had enough energy to come and join us in our mahi and get the trees into the ground. What a great way to round up the Love Taupō Trail Festival by giving back to Papatūānuku.
As well as the event participants, we also had our valued community supporters there including the Kids Greening Taupō Student Leaders who helped to plant, educate and run the BBQ. We got all 1800 trees planted, mulched and staked and even had time for a cup of tea and sausage at the end. It was great to see a combination of our regular supporters and some new faces, as always more hands means lighter work. We also need to thank Supercars and their generous sponsorship of this community planting site. We were all very excited that we got the opportunity to meet the drivers and organisers when they came to plant some trees here at the start of the week and look forward to seeing them again next year.
There was just a little bit of staking and watering of the thirsty plants which was carried out by our wonderful team of Wicked Weeders on the following Tuesday. The site looked fabulous once we had finished, far removed from the devastation left in the wake of Cyclone Gabrielle. Ka pai team, look what can be achieved when a community works together. We will be back, planting again at Karetoto Road on Saturday 17th August, so save the date and check out our planting calendar so you don’t miss out.
