More opportunities to touch grass in 2025
Native grasses only, mind you. Back by popular demand, the Whakatipu Reforestation Trust will host summer evening sessions at the Jean Malpas Community Nursery in 2025.
The evening sessions will run every Wednesday in February and March from 5.30pm – 7.30pm, so volunteers can step up the number of native plants ready for planting at community sites. The morning nursery sessions, which attract a core group of committed volunteers, will run as usual from 9am – noon.
As locals well know, the longer, warmer summer hours let us pack a lot more activity into a day, and create lots of after-work options. The evening nursery sessions are a great way to catch up with friends mid-week, decompress from the daily grind and meet like-minded people – all while giving back to our incredible environment.
Jean Malpas Nursery was established in 2014 to provide trees for the many planting projects carried out by the Whakatipu Reforestation Trust. Using eco-sourced seed, the nursery and its volunteers propagate and look after over 10,000 plants each year, nurturing them until they have reached the right size to be planted out at one of the Trust’s planting sites.
Helping is not only a way to fit some essential green time into the day: there’s plenty to learn if you’re interested in native plants, gardening or understanding our local ecosystems.
On a given day, volunteers might be pricking out tiny seedlings, ‘potting on’ seedlings into larger pots or weeding and maintaining larger shrubs. No prior knowledge or planting skills are needed, as there is always a coordinator or skilled volunteer around to help.
And where do all these plants end up? Most likely it’ll be one of the keystone sites managed by the Whakatipu Reforestation Trust. These are public reserves throughout the basin where we’ve planted over 120,000 native shrubs in our 10 years of existence. Or the shrubs might find a home in your own neighborhood. We’ve supplied plants to community groups for sites from Glenorchy to Gibbston and everywhere in between!
If you’re interested in attending a Community Nursery Session, roll up to Jean Malpas Nursery on Poplar Drive, Kelvin Heights, with gardening gloves, water bottle, a sunhat and sunscreen if needed. Up-to-date information and dates can be found on the Trust’s Facebook page and we send out a regular newsletter too. All are welcome!
www.wrtqt.org.nz
FB: Wakatipu Reforestation Trust
IG: @wakatipureforestationtrust
