Today our good friends from the Westpac bank corporate human resources group once again spent a day at CUE Haven doing some winter planting.  The team arrived first thing in the morning and included Afiafi, Anthea and Inge.  Also joining us were their family and friends Cady, Cris, Laci, and Will.

Almost everyone had volunteered at CUE Haven before so we spent some time catching up over morning tea and then Thomas gave a safety briefing and a description of the work planned for the day.

The plan for the day was to do some enhancement planting in an area that had been initially planted in 2013.  The fast growing manuka and karamu that were planted at that time have grown up to create the right environment for longer lived trees that will become the CUE Haven forest in the future.

Before heading out to the field, the team showed off their fancy new gloves, which wouldn’t stay clean for long!

We drove up to the work site where Thomas did a brief planting demonstration and the team then went to work.  Trees planted today included kawakawa, nikau, puriri, taraire, titoki and totara.

The first task was to set the trays out along the road near the planting sites.

Because most of the trees planted today will grow to be huge trees, they have to be planted far apart in light wells in the existing bush.  As a result, the team needed to spread out to find suitable spots for the planting and in some cases had to trim back vegetation to ensure the trees planted today would get enough light. 

In addition to trees and spade, the team also took loppers and saws to prepare their planting sites.

They went to work, planting the trees over a wide area.

In just a few hours, the team managed to plant all of the trees and made a major contribution to the CUE Haven landscape. 

They collected all the pots, trays and gear and loaded it back into the ute.

After cleaning up the spades and gear, there was still time before lunch so we requested the team to tackle two more projects.

Because of unusually wet weather, we’ve been getting a lot of runoff from the orchard near the cottage into the driveway.  We started some remediation work but it is now too wet for diggers to work in the area until things dry out in the spring.  We requested the team to have a look at the situation to come up with a temporary solution.

Will and Afi took on the task of digging a small drainage ditch to carry water away from the steps and the driveway into the bush behind the cottage.

It was a messy job because (of course) it had started raining and digging in the wet, heavy, slippery clay was a challenge. But they did an excellent job and the new drain is already carrying water away from the driveway.

In the meantime, the rest of the team worked on putting down a new layer of mesh on the steps up to the shed.  The steps are built from old railway sleepers and can be slippery when wet.  Year ago we put a metal mesh on the steps and it has started to wear out in spots.  We replaced it with a more heavy duty plastic mesh.  The team rolled it out and fastened it in place with staples.

The job took a lot of teamwork to keep the mesh flat as it was nailed down.

The sections had to be cut to size to fit each step.

The end result looks great and a huge thank you to the team for carrying on even as the rain got heavier.

Many thanks to Afi for organising the volunteer team today and continuing to champion CUE Haven at Westpac.  And an extra special thanks to Will for his wonderful gift to CUE Haven.

Huge THANK YOU to the whole team.  It was great seeing you all again and we very much appreciate your continued support and hard work and amazing contribution to CUE Haven. We hope you enjoyed the day as much as we did and look forward to having you out again soon for another fun and productive volunteer day.

THANK YOU!! THANK YOU!!