See a Need...Fill a Need!

A major plumbing disaster last term required our main entrance garden to be sacrificed in order to access drainage pipes. Now that spring was upon us it was time to plant it up into something more welcoming...

Luckily we had an enthusiastic team of 6, Year eights who had been itching to tidy up our front gardens since Term 1. We also had our fantastic Tui products from our award winning School Challenge prize...and all the native seedlings we had planted up late last year with Natasha from DOC...sourced from the front Gardens!

We were also fortunate enough to have just picked up 6 more native shrubs courtesy of the National "Paper 4 Trees" initiative, we also had the 6 scleranthus ground covers we qualified for last year on hand.

 

http://www.paper4trees.co.nz/ 

 

A HUGE thank you to Holcim who have kindly sponsored the "paper 4 Trees" in the Buller region.

We're not just a coal town, we also have very pure limestone deposits that Holcim make into cement for use around our great country.

 

Every year we look forward to exchanging our waste paper for trees

 

 So it was with much enthusiasm that our team of 6 got stuck into preparing and planting up our main entrance...

Once the soil had been enriched with a trailer load of compost, it was time to lay out our native plant selection:

 

Magenta tea trees & Lancewoods for the back row

Assorted flaxes in magenta and soft green for the middle ground

Ringaringa lilies toward the front

Mounding ground cover in the form of scleranthus for a nice velvety tactile front row (these are going to receive a lot of friendly exploratory  pats from our students)

 

Much was learnt about composition, grouping our selection in 3's, and tallest to the back and shortest to the front!

Holes were dug, prepared with our great Tui products, planted and  watered well.

I wonder how many holes were dug in total?

Starting to look really good team...

Time for some weed matting and the application of mulch...do you like our cunning method of protecting the plants while we barrowed the mulch?

 

Thanks to the major regional storm at Easter we have an abundant supply of mulch on site here at school and quite a bit more natural light coming in along our Northern boundary.All the beautiful phohutukawa we lost have just moved form the back field to the front garden in a different form!

A final tidy up of our work site and it was time to revel...

 

...all our great work to our class mates and School Principal.

Looking stunning Team...

...nice use of the school colours in your plantings...

 ...a bit of active growth over the summer and this garden will be really flying the magenta North School flag, to welcome all into our great school!

 Great work Team, its amazing what 6 students can achieve in just 2 and a half hours!

Well Done!

Pottering around with DOC

 Just before School finished for the year we were very fortunate to have the lovely Natasha our Local DOC (Department of Conservation) Community Ranger spend the afternoon with us in our school gardens.

 Our Garden Warrior mission was to rescue all the self sown native seedlings in our front gardens, and learn about identifying our native trees in the process...

 Books were consulted for confirmation and advice on growing habitats...

 Pesky wilding Cherry trees were given the heave ho!

Our beautiful Kereru Native Pigeons absolutely adore the berries and new shoots in the spring...thus in the process spreading their favourite spring time food source all around our district!

 We all became rather expert at spotting native seedlings, and were amazed at how many different species had decided to sprout in our gardens...

 Seed sizes, shapes, textures and methods of dispersal were discussed, and seeds were collected for growing!
Remember the easy rule: sow your seeds no more than twice the depth of the size of the seeds (i.e. tiny poppy seeds stay on the surface, bean seeds need to be pushed in to the seed raising mix at least their length in depth!

 

Our seedling foraging complete, it was back to the garden area with our bucket loads of treasure for potting up to grow on!

 Our Tui products, part of our prize package for winning the National Tui School Garden Challenge were put to good use. Natasha showed us the very important tip of drowning our collected seedlings in a buckets of water while they awaited their turn to be potted...keeping those roots saturated and out of the sun and wind is critical to the seedlings on going survival!

 Re-cycled pots form our Garden Gnomes own home gardening efforts were pretty much completely used up...

 Everything got a good soaking as we were going against the grain potting up with the onset of summer ahead of us, we had to keep our potted efforts watered twice a week over the summer break...

 Now that we had potted up over 60 individual seedlings...we needed somewhere out of the heat of summer sun for them to reside...

A HUGE effort Garden Warriors!

THANK YOU Natasha for spending a VERY informative afternoon with us, we all learnt a lot. Some of the native seedlings we found included:

 

Assorted small flax

Ringaringa lilies

Totara trees

Rimu or Kahikatea trees

Cabbage trees

 

As it turns out we really needed these seedlings after the Easter storm, and we plan to collect and pot up another batch this month for on growing...

TREEmendous School Makeover Application

 

 We have a TREEmendous NEED for Trees!

 

The 16th April at Westport North School is the Day the wind blew so TREEmendously...we lost 75% of the trees...

 ... BIG and small trees, old and young trees...

 ...mostly our favourite climbing trees, forts, space craft, a whole "Forest of Imagination" LOST!

 

 ... leaves stripped off everything not uprooted or snaped into two!

 Replanting and regeneration of our "Forest of Imagination" will start here with this enormous pile of mulch...

...a mural of native birds along the fence of the "Mother Earth Orchard"...

  ...mulch around the orchard, then the remainder for regeneration of our "Forest of Imagination"...

Stumps will be left in place to become catalysts of imagination...

 

DOC will be re-enlisted once again to help collect seeds and seedlings...

 ...for more potting up and propagating.

 Books will be consulted ...

 Our 2014 Tui School Challenge products...

 ... all the nutrients a Forrest needs for growth!

 A "TREEmendous School Makeover" would allow us to purchase larger trees for our "Forest of Imagination", supplementing our seedlings.

 

At Westport North School we are regenerating our "Forest of Imagination", a TREEmendous Team effort is required but the seeds are already sown.

The Day the wind kept blowing...

 

 ...and blowing and BLOWING!

 

For over 12 hours with unrelenting ferocity, the wind howled down the entire length of the West Coast...transforming our landscape over the course of one day.

So how did our school garden cope...time for a look...

 Not too bad actually, quite a bit more light coming in from the Buller High School side, with a few less trees to offer shade...

 Nothing to really loose your head over...

.... was there Darth Vader!

 Sadly NO Tamarillo this winter...but at least we still have our trees!

 Not a single blade of pea straw left of the pea straw bale retaining wall, and not a single leaf left on the pumpkins.

As for the Jerusalem artichokes...not a trace left.

I guess we won't need to weed this corner!

 Only two casualties in the Mother Earth Orchard...this apple and our avocado tree.

 Nothing left of our bean and sunflower tee pee...but only the lid missing from our orchard worm farm!

 So how did the rest of our school grounds fare?

Looks like the view has opened up a bit on the north boundary...

 Possibly 70% of our mature trees uprooted or snapped off...

 ...some of them not so small either...

 ...we calculate over 52 years of playground sentry duty!

 The loss of EVERYONE'S FAVOURITE climbing tree is going to be a bit hard to take when school arrives back after the Easter break!

 Just as well we are embracing Autumn, and we have time to find some new shade sails...

 ...and pole!

 Literarily ripped to shreds!

If only these were Phohutukawa stamens...

 Just as well we enjoyed a wonderful afternoon in December last year, collecting self sown native seedlings from our front Gardens!

A HUGE Thank you to Natasha our Community DOC Ranger for spending the afternoon with us potting up our finds...we'll need you back this term!

We have a bit of work ahead of us, we'll have all the mulch we need to mulch the Mother Earth Orchard and re-plant the northern boundary with natives!