Our organisation has morphed into two teams with the Landscapers doing the heavy work like clearing land and putting up fences and the Parks team sorting out the mess and planting the trees in a pattern that will be attractive when they mature in twenty years time.
The latest addition was to fence the piece of mown land that looked like a private garden and plant it so that walkers feel confident with going over it. With it fenced, we then planted six beautiful big trees and surrounded them with flax and cabbage trees.
The long, upstream strip was thick with taiwan cherry and wild ginger and this has now been cleared and planted. It still need some work but there are a lot of big trees in the ground and it looks as though someone care for it.

There are two streams in this reserve and it is rumored that they were once Maori gardens, which is credible, as the soil is good and there are clumps of Taro on the stream edge. We are trying to recruit some schools to adopt the streams as a project and replant them with wetland  plants and also the typical plants that Maori would have had for basic food and medicinal herbs.

We have had a few good sessions on the Peacock Gardens reserve where we have cleared and cleaned up the strip that was overgrown with Taiwan cherry and ginger. It might still look like a battlefield from the 1st World War but it is definitely taking shape and ready for further planting.

On another day we extended the area that is intended for the car park and it would take about ten cars, which is plenty.  A tree stump in the entrance caused a bit of trouble but Graeme and Carol supplied a strop and Wills trusty antique Land Cruiser pulled it out easily. We were hoping that FNDC would deliver some metal to make the surface but this needs a bit more time to fit into the budget.
The Parks team were ready to do the planting but rained off by a short and fierce rainstorm and will have another go next week.