Contact Energy community plantings with Greening Taupō

Greening Taupō community plantings started with a Contact Energy planting on 1st of June 2013. It was the launch of Greening Taupō and 300 people came along to plant 3000 trees and to support Greening Taupō. This Saturday the 17th of June will be Greening Taupōs 10th planting with Contact Energy.

In total 22000 natives have been planted and 900 volunteers have joined in with the Contact community plantings over the 10 years

Greening Taupō is very grateful for our relationship with Contact; Contact has supported our mission of improving the Taupo environment for people and native wildlife. The Greening Taupō / Contact Plantings have focused on Wairakei Drive, not only improving the ecological corridor for native biodiversity with thousands of native plantings, but Wairakei Drive is a popular access route to and from Taupō for many visitors and locals, and the increased plantings help create a sense of arrival for Taupō.

The Contact restoration work also greatly supports Greening Taupōs champion, Shawn Vennell with his passion for improving Wairakei Drive.

Contact plantings have had many memorable weather events. Snow flurries at Oruanui. A frost that froze plants in their pots and the ground so solid you couldn’t dig holes, that’s when we changed the time to 11 a.m. in winter. Thick cold fog where we could hardly see the volunteers, and beautiful and fine days to downpours, we would always get a fantastic turnout and everyone had fun.

The following photos are nowhere near photo point photography, just thought it was a good idea and jumped in my car yesterday to get some recent shots!!