2023 planting season 🌳

Ten successful Greening Taupō community planting events were held throughout the 2023 planting season, with 3500 enthusiastic individuals, families, and supporters coming together to help plant the 34,000 natives that were planted this year, adding to our grand total of over 250 000 natives planted at community plantings in 10 years. 

But Greening Taupō isn't just about planting numbers. Established ten years ago with the vision to improve the Taupō environment for people and native wildlife. Greening Taupo is a collaborative project that, to date, has achieved great things. Partners and members of our community have come together to help restore the environment, which will benefit our generation and generations to come.

With all Greening Taupō community plantings, the amazing Wicked Weeders and Kids Greening students provide invaluable support that makes the event run smoothly.

This year's planting season was once again such fun. Starting in early April,  we joined up again with Taupo Golf Club to support their Project BirdLife initiative to improve areas surrounding the golf course for wildlife habitat. This supports the wider Greening Taupō objective of creating and maintaining ecological corridors between Tauhara and the Waikato River. It was a fantastic day with great support from the community, Contact, and Trees that Count.

We also held the annual Wairakei Drive planting in April, led by our amazing supporter, Shawn Vennell. Cyclone Gabrielle had caused significant damage along the Drive; mostly pine trees large and small had been blown over everywhere. In some restoration sites, large trees had collapsed within. Firewood fairies have helped clear a lot of the timber; large piles of branches and roots are still visible along the drive. Luckily, the Wairakei Drive site for this year's planting was unaffected by the cyclone and Shawn was able to prepare it for planting. This planting was sponsored by Upflow and the team came along in force and helped get the 2000 plants in the ground. Upflow is sponsoring three community plantings on Wairakei Drive, it's wonderful to have this support. 

In May, we continued planting out the 2021 Arbor site along Centennial Drive. This site is coming along nicely. We are now looking for funding to remove more of the surrounding weeds and continue with the restoration.

Greening Taupō Day celebrations were once again held in early June. It was a massive day, with over a thousand people attending. The rain did spoil the party early on but didn’t last long and everyone got to enjoy the day by planting and doing all the environmental activities that were provided by the 40+ businesses and organisations.

Also in June, Greening Taupō held its 10th annual community planting with Contact Energy; 170 volunteers joined in the celebration and helped plant 2,000 native plants, helping to restore another section of Wairakei Drive, and, of course, eat cake! 

We are so grateful for our long-term relationship with Contact Energy. In total, over 1,000 volunteers have helped plant 25,000 natives as part of the Greening Taupō and Contact Energy community planting events. These plantings have been focused on Wairakei Drive, which has improved the ecological corridor for native biodiversity. This restoration work also greatly supports Greening Taupōs champion, Shawn Vennell with his passion for improving Wairakei Drive.

July saw the rise of Matariki and with the wonderful collaboration with Tuwharetoa Maori Trust Broad, they were able to lead us with another successful Matariki planting alongside the beautiful Waikato River. 

Kauri Drive below Wairakei Village, is a new project for Greening Taupō this year. With his inspiring drive, Shawn Vennell led an amazing restoration of the site, clearing out tonnes of rubbish and preparing the site for planting. The community helped plant 3000 of the 10,000 native plants that will create a beautiful native forest in the future. We had amazing support from many, including Tidy Taupo, Seay, NZ Forest Managers, LINZ and the students of Wairakei Primary School.

Kids Greening Taupō student leaders undertook a successful planting in August at Spa Park with support from the Taupō District Council and the Disc Golf Club. A fun day out for everyone!

Haimes Builders has sponsored a site alongside the river below Kahurangi Gully in Rangitira Park. They did a great job helping to prepare the site, and the community joined in to plant the 1800 natives. Support also came from Korio, the Breeze, Novus and Trees That Count. Haimes will maintain this site and plan to improve the surrounding area.

We finished off the planting season in September with Hipapatua and our iconic annual planting at Whakaipo Bay.  With support from TDC, Wairakei Trust, Trees that Count, WCEET, MPI and DOC

Thank you to all who made it such a successful planting season and celebrated 10 years of Greening. It was nice to catch up with our regular planting community and wonderful to see many new planters joining in, some having travelled from out of town to join in with Greening Taupō.

We have some great plans for next year. We look forward to seeing you all in 2024!