Daily Archives: May 9, 2021

A jungle of Garden Escapees

Our second community working bee for the year was held on 2 May. 7
volunteers spent three hours clearing weeds along the bottom of
Tenetahi Rd. This area was cleared by contractors and a team of
volunteers in 2013 but no major follow-up weeding has taken place
since then.

Jasmine, ivy, blue morning glory, moth plant and passionfruit vine are
just some of the weeds strangling this area of native bush. Clearing
these weeds is a massive undertaking.

The Society has been employing Stefan Spreitzenbarth to work on the
foreshore and he has been doing a fabulous job. Jo Evans and Sue
Gibbings have spent many volunteer hours in this area of bush,
including carrying out regular trapping.

Thanks to our volunteers including Liz Jones, Neil Sutherland, Jo
Evans, Richard Taylor, Niklas Erikson and Chris Erikson. A big thank
you also to Jo Evans taking away a load of weeds in his ute.

Panakenake Transplantation

Thanks to Chris Wadsworth and Keith Paine, secondary school
mathematics teachers with a passion for New Zealand’s native flora and
fauna, further headway has been made in the valley. Together they
spent 20 volunteer hours clearing and bagging Tradescantia and other
weeds. They also spent another 1 1/2 hours checking and clearing the
traps, adding 10 rats and 2 mice to our total on the Mt Pleasant side
of the valley.

Four years ago John and Nola Harvey offered to propagate some
Panakenake and this plant completely took over their vegetable garden.
We met on 24 April to replant it by the stream edges. John sliced the
plant into pieces, including a decent amount of soil. It was then
rolled, transferred into bags and driven to the bottom of Mt Pleasant
Drive where it was transported to the valley in shopping bags and
backpacks – rather back breaking work! It is hoped this plant will
become established in the cleared areas of the stream.