Mother’s Day Community Planting in Kaiwaka 

On Sunday 14 May, Kaipara Moana Remediation partnered with Kaipara District Council, Te Uri o Hau Environs, Rural Design nursery, Kaiwaka School and EmGuards to support a community planting day on the Kaiwaka River banks.  The river is a taonga for Te Uri o Hau, and was once full of eels and baby mullet, with nearby trees full of kingfishers and other birds who fed on the local insect life.

Planting the river margins will help protect and restore the river for future generations, and also reduce the impacts of future floods and storms by slowing the water flow, and holding the soil on the river banks, preventing it from washing into the river.

The event was one of several hosted by Kaipara Moana Remediation to help achieve KMR’s goal of planting 400,000 trees this winter, and 20 million trees across the Kaipara Moana catchment over the next decade.  On Monday 15 May, a further planting event was hosted by KMR in partnership with Kaiwaka School.  150 schoolchildren continued to plant the KDC riverbanks and learn about the whakapapa of the river.

The photos below show what a fantastic event it was, with the community coming together to plant around 1100 plants on Mother’s Day.  A number of families came along to enjoy the fine weather and plant a tree for their Mum, with the locally designed and manufactured cardboard plant guards being a ‘canvas’ for drawings and messages from the kids.