TRIP REPORT : Industrial Research Ltd., Gracefield, and Petone

 Saturday 6 July 2002 :   1. Industrial Research Ltd., Gracefield, 2. Rare Leptinella hunt, 3. Petone Esplanade native plantings.

Les Roberts.   Photo: Barbara Mitcalfe .

Les Roberts is the site manager of Industrial Research Limited in Grace-field.   We met him for a tour of the site and hardly got our feet wet despite it being mid-winter.

Les welcomed us and gave us an extensive history of the area.   IRL inherited the 11ha from DSIR in 1992.   Roughly half of its funding comes from the government and the other from private sources.   On one boundary is the heavily-polluted Waiwhetu Stream.   Les is a member of the Waiwhetu Stream Working Group which also includes representatives of Hutt City Council, Wellington Regional Council, Te Atiawa and other interest groups.

Les then showed us an area of hillside that he has had cleared of gorse, fennel and blackberry and replanted with appropriate native species.   This has been done over 8 years, and his contractors, Excell Corporation, have put in a track.   This has proved popular and has resulted in extra funds being made available for the project.

At the end of this walkway is a garden dedicated to Sister Aubert.   This Catholic nun arrived in the Hokianga with Bishop Pompallier and later went to Hawke's Bay, the Whanganui River and then the Home of Compassion in Island Bay, Wellington.   Sister Aubert is noted for her medicines made from native plants.   Although her recipes were destroyed, bottles of medicine, said to be over 100 years old, are being analysed by Max Kennedy and his team of scientists at IRL.   This project runs in conjunction with Ngati Kotahi from Napier and Ngati Ruaka from Whanganui, and negotiations are underway with a tribe from the Bay of Islands.   The Sister Aubert garden contains all plants known to be used in the medicines and each has a plaque with their botanical, Maori and common names.

We returned to the banks of Waiwhetu Stream.   This area was a dumping ground for rubbish and was covered in willow, blackberry and many other weeds.   Over the past three years Les has had rubbish and weeds removed and 5000 plants have been planted including Carex secta, C. dipsacea, Phormium tenax, Cordyline australis, Dacrycarpus dacrydioides, Griselinia littoralis and Carex litorosa.   Les plans to remove from the stream, the flag iris which is infamous for being the largest infestation in the country!

We made our way back via many plantings on site, seeing an impressive garden with Cordyline indivisa and Colensoa physaloides with its bright purple seed capsules.

Before lunch we visited the banks of Waiwhetu Stream near Hutt Park camping ground to see Leptinella dioica ssp. monoica which is hanging on, probably only because the stream is tidal and the exotic grasses are unable to cope with the salt.   It has been suggested that this population may have been planted by Tom Moss.

We went to Petone Esplanade for lunch and were about to examine the plantings there when it began to rain, so we decided to call it a day.

Trip participants: Claire Basham, Sally Bowman, Barbara Clark, Penny Currier, Corraldo Fougère, Matilda Halley, Chris Hopkins, Chris Horne, Diane Lowe, Sister Loyola, Barbara Mitcalfe, Kaaren Mitcalfe, Tanya Mitcalfe, Darea Sherrett, Les Roberts (co-leader), Robyn Smith (co-leader), and Julia Stace.

Robyn Smith