Forest & Bird Warkworth Branch—28 September 2019

We started our spring maintenance with our friends from the Warkworth branch of the Royal Forest & Bird Protection Society out to help us pot us seedlings and do some spring maintenance.  Members of the group have been coming annually since 2016 and today the group included Elizabeth, Lawre, Mel, Raewyn, Roger, Sally and young Millie.

It was great to catch up with the team again and we had a quick morning tea and updated then on the activities at CUE Haven and then went to work in the nursery.

We had previously set up the nursery for the group.  A big THANK YOU to Dalton’s for once again generously donating the potting mix for the day.

This year’s work focused on transplanting trees that were too small to plant this year into bigger pots so they can grow up in the nursery over the summer.  We potted up kahikatea, kohekohe, miro, nikau, puriri, and tanekaha seedlings.

The hard working team had no trouble finishing of the transplanting and even cleaned up the nursery when they were finished.

The seedlings will spend the summer in the CUE Haven nursery and will be planted in the field next winter.

While the most of the group were repotting the seedlings, Roger decided to make a head start on the other task – trimming back the vegetation that has overgrown along the main race.

Everything has been growing well during the warm winter and it was time to do some trimming and so once the team finished potting up, we drove them to the top of the property.  The plan was to start at the top of the race and work back down.

And they quickly worked down the race.

The very hard working group accomplished an amazing amount of trimming and it was then time for a relaxing lunch.

As always, it was really good having our friends from F&B Warkworth out to assist and we do so appreciate their hard work, enthusiasm and continued support.

Our many thanks to Elizabeth, Lawre, Mel, Millie, Raewyn, Roger and Sally. And a special thank you to Raewyn for organising the visit today.

Thank you all for giving up your Saturday to help out.  Not only did you all accomplish a huge amount of work, but, as always, you were also a source of excellent practical information on weed and pest management as well as best practices for planting and management.

We very much look forward to having you all back at CUE Haven this summer to see the new viewing platform.

Thank You!!