TRIP REPORT : Kaiwharawhara Valley restoration

 Saturday 3 July 2004 :   Kaiwharawhara Valley restoration

Jonathan Kennett and Bronwyn Wall began with a slide show documenting the history of their restoration team’s work in the valley over several years.   Challenges faced, successes celebrated and hard lessons learnt along the way were discussed.   The session was an excellent model of the essential task of record-keeping, which is not often observed in restoration projects.   Enlightened by this and armed with tools and enthusiasm, we went to our streamside work stations in slushy conditions, for this final planting of the year.   Along the way we were impressed by the notices explaining the restoration project.   Jonathan and Bronwyn had allocated to us a number of podocarps and other canopy species and we set to work in bouldery soil to bed them in and stake them.   Later, Susan Moore and Robyn Smith guided us around the Otari rock garden designed and planted many years ago by Walter Brockie.   We were pleased to renew our acquaintance with Otago BotSoccer Moira Parker who was with us for the day.

Participants: Barbara Clark, Phil Garnock-Jones, Chris Hopkins, Chris Horne, Jonathan Kennett (co-leader), Rodney Lewington, Barbara Mitcalfe (scribe), Moira Parker, Mick Parsons, Darea Sherratt, Joyce Stretton, Bronwyn Wall (co-leader).