A New Welcome at CUE Haven–July 10

Up until now, guests arriving at CUE Haven were greeted with an open field alongside the drive up to the house.

But that has changed thanks to the efforts of a great team from the Mt Eden branch of the Satya Sai Group who volunteered to come up to do a day of planting.  It wasn’t their first visit to CUE Haven.  They had also come out back in February to help us with our nursery mural painting and we look forward to their continuing involvement with our revegetation project.

We didn’t know if we would be planting up until the last minute because the weather forecast was not promising.  Heavy rain, high winds and thunderstorms were predicted.  Although we had all those things overnight, the sun was shining first thing in the morning and so planting was a go.

Because a large part of the Satya Sai group were children and young adults, we had requested the Conservation Volunteers to provide us with a team leader to manage the planting for the day and teach the group about NZ native bush and the revegetation project.  John Busson, the Conservation Volunteers team leader, arrived with his wife Heike, at 9.30 am. with  extra spades and gloves and before the group arrived we helped them lay out the plants on the planting site.  John’s participation was generously funded by Fonterra’s Catchment Care programme.

The group of twenty four arrived about 10.30 am and after a snack and a short orientation to the project the team got to work.

John gave a safety briefing and a planting demonstration, and explained the different species of plants we would be planting and the benefits of planting particular species to improve the water quality and soil drainage.

The group was enthusiastic and energetic and made major progress.

A few showers passed through but that didn’t stop the group.  After a short snack break . . .

They went back to work . . .

After a while it started to rain again and refused to stop.  We decided that tree planting should be fun, and it’s not fun when you are soaked by a rain squall and slipping in mud . . .

So we decided to call a halt and have lunch in the garage where is was dry and warm.

It was a fantastic planting effort.  In about two hours, the group managed to plant over 750 trees!  In addition to making a significant contribution to the CUE Haven revegetation project, they have also created what will become a beautiful welcome to the CUE Haven property.

A special thank you to Dr Shobi Gopal for organising the Satya Sai Group visit and to Conservation Volunteers and Fonterra for making John available to assist us.

And a very big thank you to: Aarabi, Aditya, Akshya, Anish, Avinash, Bharathy, Carys, Deeksha, Dharma, Edwin, Heike, Jay, Jith, John, Mahesha, Prashanth, Prini, Rahul, Ranjan, Satyam, Shobi, Sony, Sruthi, Stephen, Vidhya and Vilashini.

Your efforts today have made a very lasting difference to CUE Haven and our planet. We look forward to your continued visits.  Thanks again!!