What a great turnout to enjoy our very sunny working bee in September!

We had one group of volunteers in the nursery, one group protecting our plants with a thick layer of mulch, and another group busy with ‘infill’ planting: adding bigger trees where the nursery trees have been growing for a while, to give them some protection and shelter. Some other volunteers worked on the predator control: refilling bait stations or checking and refilling our self-resetting traps with lure and a gas canister. Another team looked after the bonfires where we got rid of old debris and leftover timber. If we had only brought some marsh mellows… The pesky willow roots were removed from the potting mix pile and and have to try a lot harder to get back in, now all the gaps are filled with a mixture of concrete and cement!

Having an eye out for items of botanical interest can be very useful when you’re out in the bush: Stefan and Anko managed to find some Truffula Trees (Dr Seuss The Lorax, remember?), which John Staniland pointed out are very rare indeed. If you want a giggle, we even turned it into a video here.

Socially distancing is easy when you’ve got 37 hectares to play with! But we’ll be very happy if we can go back to level 1 and have shared lunches again like we used to… I do miss the soups, salads and home-made bread… 😉

Thank you to all of you who came to help, it was great to see all the jobs done and the nursery looking so well-organised again and isn’t it amazing those tiny kahikatea will be our forest giants, one day?!

Hope to see you next time! – Annalily & the trustees