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12 volunteers met on Sunday 17 July to plant the remaining trees provided by DoC’s Community Conservation Fund.

As usual, the main challenge was transporting the plants down the hill.  Thankfully three fit Grammar rowing boys carried out the majority of this back breaking work.

After lunch the group met again on the Dingle’s wetland area to carry out further weeding and planting of trees funded by Auckland Council’s EIF fund.

Unfortunately there was insufficient time to do maintenance work on Sir Duncan McMullin’s property.  There are still approximately 300 trees still to be planted – approximately 200 on the Dingle’s property and 100 on Sir Duncan McMullin’s.

Another planting day took place on Wednesday, 29 June with Trees for Survival and Takapuna Intermediate.

30 school children and several volunteers planted over 700 trees on the slopes of Sir Duncan McMullin’s property.

The children were extremely hard working and well behaved.  After 2 hours planting they enjoyed lunch consisting of hamburgers, baking and fruit.

Thanks to all our volunteers and Shelley from Trees for Survival.

Look what Richard Taylor found in the wetland area while planting on Sunday!  It’s a peripatus (or velvet worm) named Peripatoides novaezelandiae.

We had a great turn-out today to plant the slips on the Dingle’s property.  Many thanks to Neil and Sheryl Sutherland from Leigh Coastal Care group, Richard Taylor, Trish Gundy, Jo Evans, Sue Gibbings and Alan Lee for all your efforts.  Thanks also to Marco de Jong, Chris Ding, Tyler Wang and Niklas Erikson who worked hard for 4 hours carrying plants down the steep slopes and planting one of the larger slips.  Marco and Chris managed to get stuck up to the knees in mud and needed to be hosed down before they could get in the car!  Great to see teenagers engaged in (and enjoying) outdoor activities.

Our first Trees for Survival planting day took place on Wednesday 25 May with Ponsonby Primary School.  The wetland plants were wonderful specimens and a credit to the school’s nursery.  Fortunately the wet weather held off until after the plants went in.  The previously grazed area was extremely hard to dig and the volunteers suggested it must have been a road redirected at some stage.  Thanks to Ponsonby Primary School and Trees for Survival for their wonderful efforts as well as the Leigh Harbour Valley Society volunteers.  This will be a wonderful show case to the many visitors to Goat Island and Pakiri Beach and we look forward to seeing an improvement in the quality of the stream water and an increase in fresh water fish/invertebrates now the cattle have been removed from this catchment area.

The muddy water around the Leigh coastline was a sign that the recent heavy rainfall had caused significant damage in the area.  Unfortunately our restoration project was not left unscathed.  Two large slips on Sir Duncan McMullin’s property buried at least 50 of the wetland plants planted last Autumn.  Thankfully, the planted slopes were not affected, although one slip on the unplanted side of the valley exposed a large area of greywacke so we won’t need to plant anything there!   Another slip on our property took out some of the steps and a number of native trees on one of the recently formed walkways.  Several large slips have also occurred along the main stream.  We won’t be planning any clean up until the soil has settled and we have a better idea of the new course of the streams which have, in some areas, been altered by the slips.

Many thanks to Marco de Jong, Chris Ding and Niklas Erikson (three fit AGS  rowers ) who helped transport carpet to Sir Duncan McMullin’s property.   After placing carpet around the trees they helped to clear and other weeds.

The plants still look very healthy.   Further weeding/mulching will be necessary.