ANZ—26 March 2015

ANZ New Zealand is one of New Zealand’s largest companies and one of its largest banks.  They have a strong commitment to corporate responsibility and community service and through their volunteering programme they encourage staff to volunteer their skills and time to community projects.  Today a group of eight professionals from the Institutional and Commercial Operations department came to CUE Haven to help out with some site preparation for planting and track maintenance work.

The group included Anya, Dani, Gareth, Jasmine, Jean, Lauren, Sam and Sarah.

We got acquainted over morning tea and we gave the group an overview of the CUE Haven project and a description of the work plan for the day and a safety briefing.

The plan for the day was to do some walking track maintenance and to prepare an area in the wetlands for planting.  Now that we have built the wetlands boardwalk, we can access wetland areas that were previously too difficult to get to because of the terrain and tall weeds.  The area had previously been sprayed and the team tackled the messy and back breaking job of pulling out the thick mat of dead vegetation to expose the soil so we could dig the planting holes.

In spite of the heat and the challenge, the team coped very well and accomplished a lot.

They even found parts of the job relaxing.

Once the area was clear the team dug some holes to plant kahikatea trees.

The area will be planted with additional wetland plants this winter.

Once that job was finished, the team continued to clear vegetation that had grown over the walking track and boardwalk over the summer.

We broke for a well-deserved lunch and then took the team on a tour of the property and hiked back down on the walking track.

It was a relaxing end to a tiring day.

Our many thanks to Sam for organising this visit and handling the arrangements for the team to come out.

And a very big thank you to everyone in the hard working team. It was great meeting you all and we enjoyed spending time with you. Thanks to all your hard work today we now have a big area in the wetlands cleared and ready for planting this season. And trimming the overgrown vegetation along the walking tracks will make it easier for visitors to explore the area.

We look forward to having you back at CUE Haven for a more relaxing visit sometime soon.

Thanks again!